More Things in Heaven and Earth
by Dragonofshadows115
Summary: Life and death are two sides of a coin. What divides a dead machine from a living person? Go down far enough, and we're all just a chemical machine. I found that the difference between life and machine was a small one indeed, and that the past has a way of interfering with the future. An Inheritance Cycle Self-Insert. Part 1 of a series.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Christopher Paolini's _Inheritance Cycle_

* * *

You know how they say that the chances of dying in a plane crash are about one in eleven million? It might surprise you to learn that that kind of statistic isn't the greatest comfort when your plane's engines are streaming fire outside the window and you can see, by the angle of the blue horizon relative to the aeroplane's floor, that you're in a nose dive towards the sea.

I could say that, as the aeroplane scribed an arc downwards towards the blue, blue Atlantic beneath, I was calm and collected and accepted my death, regretting only the good I had not yet done while the rest of the passengers screamed their heads off. That would be a lie, though. I was screaming into my yellow plastic oxygen mask right along with them. There wasn't any space in my head for regret, between the panic, the _omygodI'mgoingtodie_ and the oddly clear thought that it was just like me to go out as a result of getting out of bed late, missing the first flight and having to re-schedule.

"Please brace yourselves," came the calm, automated voice over the tannoy "The pilot is going to attempt a sea landing."

When the 737 finally hit the water, there was not so much a sound as there was simply an impact that crossed the borders between touch and hearing to occupy both senses. There was a long, dazed moment, and then I uncurled from my braced position, the overload of sensation being supplanted by a ringing pain in my head and hands where the latter had absorbed the impact of the former against the seat ahead of me. The floor buckled and more than one of the plastic panels in the ceiling popped free.

Groggily, I reached underneath my seat and pulled out the life-vest, thankful that at least one of the safety demonstrations had made it through to accessible memory. I pulled the yellow plastic lifejacket out and, unclipping my seatbelt and standing, put it on.

The automated voice was on the speakers again, urging the passengers to proceed in an orderly fashion to the overwing exits. Over the backs of the seats I could see a man in a white shirt struggling with the door there, before finally pulling it open.

Cold air rushed into the cabin as I - finally - managed to extricate myself from the chair and make my way into the aisle. I tried to get closer to the door, but everyone else seemed to have the same idea and it was all I could do to stay on my feet and be pushed along with the crowd. Men, women and children were disappearing out of the exits, one by one, jumping down and out of sight. I finally got there and, at the panicked urging of both the man behind me and my own fear, sat down on the edge of the door, then dropped to the wing, some six feet below.

I landed awkwardly, stumbling on the water-slick surface, before I caught my balance and began, cautiously, to walk over the wing towards the bright yellow dinghy which bobbed in the waves, riding up nearly level with the wing, before sinking down to a metre or so below.

Now that I was outside, I could see the plane sinking, bubbles percolating up next to the hull.

I was distracted by that as a took the last step before getting into the dinghy. That was what killed me. That and the concussion I suspect I had.

I was just on the edge of the wing, waiting for the boat to ride up so that I could step in easily. The dinghy was just in the trough between two waves and I was preparing to step down. I slipped on the slick edge of the wing, me feet going forwards as my head fell backwards, impacting the metal with a terrible _crrack_. Then I carried on falling, slipping off the edge of the wing, missing the boat and plunging feet-first into the water.

Everything was hazy and distant. Even the pain in the back of my head felt like it was somehow at arm's reach. My limbs were sluggish, numb even before the cold of the water set in. The whole situation felt so… far away. Nothing to do with me. Somebody else's problem. I could hear muffled sounds, a rumble that might have been the wave above me and sharper tones that might have been shouting.

All I could see was _blue_ and, below me, _black,_ welling up and creeping across my sight like oil. My limbs trailed behind me as the currents of the waves gently turnedme, so that the darkness of the deeps was all that I could see. My eyes drifted shut. It was little different.

* * *

When I returned to awareness, I was not sure if that for better or worse. On one hand, I hadn't just vanished with what I was pretty sure had been my death (unless this was all some crazy coma-dream). On the other, it meant that I had been wrong about the whole 'afterlife' thing, and that was worrying. Eternal punishment in hell didn't seem like a nice idea.

 **JUDGEMENT**

It wasn't a word. I don't know that I can really explain it. It was like the very meaning and essence of judgement was made manifest and rippled through me like the notes of a thousand brass instruments, golden, crystalline and bold. It tore me from my self-awareness - I hadn't really noticed anything outside myself until this point - and I became aware of the Presences.

I don't know what they were, I can't describe what they looked like. I can't describe how I could perceive all three of them, despite the fact that they encircled me, were above and below and beyond me in all ways I could comprehend. All I can do is say what they were like, but that falls far short. I don't even really remember all that much myself.

One was like cold and darkness and oblivion, serpentine in that it was significantly longer than it was thick and curled upon itself, an ouroboros of uncreation. One was like fire and heat and growing things and fangs and hot, running blood, a living star-furnace, sublimating existence from nothingness. The last was like glass and metal and solidity and ice. It might have been spiderlike, if the way in which its fractal limbs wove the madness of the second into stable form was compared to the way a spider weave its web, but that's still not right. I'm not going to try to describe them any more. It won't do any good, really.

 _CERTAINTY_

The second Meaning drove through me like spears, but it wasn't meant for me. It was directed towards the weaving-thing, the judging one.

 **ACCEPTANCE**

It rang again in brazen tones and sunlight off of gold, deafening and blinding me.

Something unfathomably weighty fell upon me. It would have crushed me flat, burned me hollow, had I been physical and not formless, substanceless thing. I felt flayed, as though everything that I was had been peeled away by that vast regard.

The last Meaning came, from all three, and this time it was directed straight at me, ringing like a bell, like shattering crystal, like glass through my heart and like the cracking of broken ice and broken bones.

 **PU** _R_ **P** _O_ **S** _E_

And then I was gone again, unaware once more of those immensities as I faded into unconsciousness.

* * *

Carn of the Gedthrall Clan was with Helzvog.

Over two months ago, now, a member of his clan had heard from a trader of the Wandering Tribes that something had been uncovered in the desert, a long silver thing being revealed beneath the sands near one of their oases. They had apparently tried to enter it, but had been unable to get through whatever material it was made of. Chalking it up as some mischief of spirits, they had left it there once they had been certain that the water was still running fine, and had thought nothing more of it.

The clan's leaders, however, had been very interested indeed, as had the council of the Grimstborithn, when they were told of it. Although the other races of Alagaesia cared little - the humans out of ignorance and the elves from arrogance - there had been peoples on the continent before they had arrived, before the dwarves had left their existence as nomads in the Hadarac behind. The Time of Giants may have been over, but it had left traces, traces that the knurlan as a whole had a vested interest in reclaiming. After all, it was in the Time of Giants that Guntera had walked the earth. It was in the Time of Giants that the dwarves themselves were created. Who knew what other wonders might be discovered?

And so it was that the Grimstborithn, in an unusual display of speed, had organised an expedition to the nameless oasis, large enough to have protection from raiders and spirits, yet small enough to traverse the desert with reasonable haste. The best and the brightest had been picked to go with them, and Carn had been honoured beyond belief that he, a scholar and magician from the Library of Baragh, had been chosen.

They had set out a little over three weeks ago, now, and had arrived at the oasis, a trickle of water that seeped from a crevice in the granite protrusion which jutted up from the sands like the hand of a dead giant after seventeen days in the desert. They had set up camp in the shadow of the bluff and had spent the first night speculating on the contents of the silvery cylinder whose side had been revealed by the shifting sands.

The next day had been significantly more frustrating.

First, they had set up a canopy over the artefact, so that they could work without the sun beating down on them. Then they had begun to measure whatever they could, and the alchemist they had with them - a Ledwonnu clansdwarf by the name of Strâddsigt - had managed to scrape a sample of the material and taken it back to his rudimentary laboratory in the shadow of the crag to analyse it. In the meantime, he and the mason and smith of the expedition, Gurmund, had worked together, he with his magic and Germund with her skill, to try and locate any areas that might be thinner or hollow.

That had not taken a great deal of time - it seemed that the surface of the artefact was only an inch or so thick, little more than a barrier between the outside and the inside. The issue had been with getting through it. The surface was near-flawless and was slightly convex, making it difficult for tools to get a purchase. They had left it while the sun was high in the sky and retreated to the crags, where their supplies and the rest of the expedition had been sequestered in the crevices that riddled them. There, Strâddsigt had regaled them with what he had discovered about whatever substance it was that made up the artefact. Apparently it was extremely tough and had qualities of both metals and ceramic, being both extremely resistant to heat and as strong as high-end dwarf steel, albeit not as easily worked, given that the hottest flame that the alchemist could produce failed to create even a red glow.

That evening, and the next few days as well, had been spent slowly and painstakingly making their way through the hull of the artefact, first creating a small peep-hole and then enlarging it, inch by painful inch, until they finally, finally had an entrance large enough to get through.

The rope constricted around Carn's waist and shoulders as he was lowered downwards towards the sloping floor, revealed in the light of the erisdar held by the dwarf already down there, a warrior by the name of Gerdir whose fists were punctuated with the blunt spikes of a set of ascûdgamln. His feet hit the floor and the dwarven magician quickly untied himself, cautiously probing outwards with his mind. He could feel nothing alive except for the faint lights of the insects in the sand and the steady lamps that were the other four members of the expedition. Nothing new.

He pulled his own flameless lantern from where it hung on his belt and ignited it with a muttered word.

In its light, he could see that he stood in what looked like a hall or a corridor, sized about right for humans or something of their stature. The passageway sloped downwards along both its length and its width, as if the artefact had tipped over at some point and extended deeper beneath the sands. Everything that Carn could see was made of the same matte-silver material as the exterior.

Picking a direction at random, Carn held his lantern high and began to make his way downwards, thankful for the slight roughness of the floor. Gerdir followed, one hand holding his lantern and the other on the pommel of his sword.

Before the pair had walked more than a few metres, the smooth lines of the wall was interrupted by the outline of a door, the door itself being a slab of the same material which was half-retracted into one side of the frame. Through the opening, Carn could make out a number of rectangular blocks with slanted ends that rose up from the floor like the tips of a giant's chisel-set. They were arranged in a rough semi-circle, the curve facing away from the door. Most importantly, the magician could sense the faintest hum of energy from them, a sign that they might be enchanted.

Opposite the door was a recessed alcove that held what looked like a statue made of bone-white plates of a similar material to the walls, over a dark skeleton of what looked more like metal. Its shape was humanoid, but its head looked like one of the jackals that stalked the fringes of the desert, with a long, pointed snout and equally long and pointed ears. Its hands were clasped in front of its chest, holding a long rod which extended down towards the floor.

Hooking his lantern back onto his belt, Carn tried to squeeze through the gap in the door. It was just a little too small.

"Gerdir, give me a hand with this?" he called, motioning the dour warrior over. He deposited his own lantern on the floor and joined the magician at the door. Together, they pulled back on the door and, with a grinding _creak_ , it moved a few inches, just enough to squeeze through. Muttering his thanks, Carn did so, wriggling a little to get through.

Now that he was inside, the dwarven explorer could see that the room itself was a semicircle as well, the curved side opposite the door. Other than the five uprights, the room was barren and empty. The magician wondered what purpose it might one have served. An aid to enchanting, perhaps?

He trailed a hand over the rightmost pedestal. It was at about his chest height. It almost felt… empty. Drained. Some high-quality gems got like that, if they were used to store large amounts of energy for long periods of time. When the energy was drained out of them, they acquired a certain hunger, a desire to be filled again. Even humans and elves had noted the phenomenon, despite their dismissiveness of the life of stones.

On a whim, Carn channelled a mote of energy into the pedestal, little more than would be needed to ignite a werelight. To his surprise, the pedestal ignited with a tracey of blue light, streamers, rivers and channels of azure light playing over its surface. He tried to cut off the feed of energy, but the pedestal refused to relinquish its grip, savagely pulling power from him. A refrain of liquid and incomprehensible speech filled the air. Carn had no idea what it meant, and wasn't in the frame of mind to work it out. Blackness was clawing at the edges of his vision. Dimly, he felt the floor impact his knees as they buckled.

The last thing he saw was the eyes of the statue opposite igniting with the same cold blue light and stepping from its pedestal with implacable purpose.

* * *

Lexicon

Helzvog - a dwarven god, the creator of the dwarves

Grimstborithn - plural of Grimstborith, clan chief

Knurlan - dwarves

Guntera - a dwarven god, the king of the gods and creator of elves

Baragh - a dwarven city

Erisdar - a magical flameless lantern, explodes when shattered

Ascûdgamln - literally 'fists of steel', a set of metal spikes embedded in the bones of the hand like integral brass knuckles.


	2. Chapter 2

I looked up at the sun, burning white-yellow in the desert afternoon. I mentally clicked the switch in my mind. The sun turned to blue-green-purple, like a bruise in the sky, blazing in ultraviolet hues. Another switch and the sun was an angry red-orange wound and the sky was dark while the desert sands burned. Another switch and the sun was yellow again in a blue sky and I stood on yellow-orange sands.

I left it there, unwilling to waste another fifteen minutes - of which I was _kindly_ informed by the numbers which flickered in the depths of my consciousness - staring into the sun and trying to avoid the problem. Facts had to be faced.

I turned, looking back at the reddish-grey crag jutting out of the sands, at the canopy of cloth stretched over wooden poles that sheltered the entrance to the silver catacomb he had just emerged from and at the three small bodies which lay on the sand beneath it. I had to face what I had done, the lives I had ended.

 _One was already dead, his head removed with a clinical sweep of my blade. The other, taller and with a shorter beard, had grabbed the nearest implement - a heavy pick - and swung it at my sword-hand with a wordless cry of rage. The pick caught the hand and pulled the blade from my grip. Unconcerned, I raised my other arm and instinctually fed energy to the gem in my palm. The temperature of the surrounding air dropped as a nucleus of heat gathered inside her skull. She screamed, once, and then fell silent, dropping bonelessly to the sands. I turned to the last one, fleeing towards the rise._

I banished the memories back into the depths of my mind, trying not to remember how _right_ it had felt, the feeling that obeying whatever imperative called me to destroy the intruders in the ship was my highest purpose. I couldn't deny that I had changed physically, to the point that I wasn't even human, but I wouldn't - couldn't - accept that _who I was_ could be stripped away from me like that.

I wasn't a killer. I was a writer, an aspiring author, the kind of person who spends far too long on their computer each day coming up with characters, plots and settings. I wasn't a killer.

Even if my body told otherwise.

Firstly, I was at least seven feet tall, if you don't count the ears. Now, I had never been especially short - I had to duck through doorways on a regular basis - but suddenly gaining that kind of height would be a surprise to anyone. I was still human _oid_ , two arms, two legs, one head, and so on, but that was about where the similarity ended. For a start, I was made of metal (and a metal-like substance that, according to my database, was apparently some kind of metal-ceramic blend with some reinforcing magic thrown in for good measure, but that's beside the point). I was, to all intents and purposes, a robot, a ghost in the machine

Except it wasn't a machine, not exactly.

For a start, there was the fact that the role of servo-motors to move the limbs was taken by a set of gems (cut into exactingly precise numerologically-significant shapes) which projected a kind of animating magic - _magic!_ \- to let me actually do anything. Then there was the fact that my right hand had a similar gem containing a magic sequence for use in fabrication and building, allowing me to break down and recombine the compounds of a material into new forms, while the left bore one which allowed limited control over heat in my vicinity. And finally, there was the not-insignificant point that _I_ , as in my mind, was contained in a diamond the size of a golf ball set within my torso, along with a few precious scraps of data on what exactly I had become, what I was and what I could do, as well as a truly vast amount of corrupted and unusable data that I would have to get rid of at the first possible opportunity.

In short, I was a seven-ish foot tall black-metal-and-white-ceramium colossus with the head of a jackal, ridiculously long and pointy ears sticking up from my head like a pair of antennae and glowing blue eyes. It was not a pleasant transition, even with the benefits of effortless strength and the fact that sleep would be obsolete for me.

What scared me more, though, was the way that I myself had changed. I was aware of every one of my thoughts and emotions. I could silence memories and call them up in crystal clarity with a thought, even if some facets of my old life still escaped me - a relic of having an organic mind, I suppose, with all its faults and frailties.

I felt self-possessed in a way I never had before, and at the same time I more mentally vulnerable than I had ever been, because there, in the back of my mind, I could feel something which i couldn't control, which was of me, and yet was not, the same thing that had made me feel so incredibly, ecstatically, horrifically justified and righteous while I was slaughtering the dwarves. It was quiescent now, its cold grip retracted. I could tell that it wasn't dead though. It was waiting, waiting for another situation that fit the parameters it was set. Then it would stretch forth again and grip my mind with its rightness and certainty, and I would be lost again.

It was like having a time-bomb strapped to your head. I decided to call it the Executive. I'm not entirely sure why I named it. I think it's a human thing, to name things, so as to give us a handle on the world. But I digress.

I was resolved to destroy it, excise it, burn it from my mind as soon as I possibly could. I had managed to reclaim control, reclaim _myself_ , only when the Executive's control relaxed after all of the 'threats' were pacified, four dead and the last already unconscious. I didn't think I could keep it under control if another 'threat' turned up, not unless I could make some headway with getting it out before then.

When I had first 'awoken' from its control, I had been horrified at what I had done. The last of the dwarves, a red-haired male, had only just fallen silent. I collapsed beside him, trying to feel something, anything, from him. The sense-magic in my fingers felt no pulse in the neck beneath his expansive, crimson-stained beard. The horror had been replaced by a cold, horrible certainty. He was dead. I had killed him, thrust a sword through his chest. And it had felt right, oh so _fucking_ _right_. There was no blood on me or my hands - it had evaporated into the air, courtesy of some kind of self-cleaning function of my new body - but I had been the one to end those lives.

I had gathered the bodies - the three above ground, at least - and placed them under the canopy, almost in a trance. Then I had turned away and walked out into the sand. Not too far, only a hundred yards or so. That was as far as I got before the emotions inside of me overwhelmed me and I exploded.

I roared to the sky, the sound echoing out into nothing over the featureless plane of the desert. The sun's heat gathered and seared the sands around me, melting them to glass in some places and freezing them till they cracked in others. I screamed and screamed and screamed, and I had no throat which could turn hoarse. I fell to my knees and beat at the sands, but there was no pain. I could feel the impact, but there was nothing to distract me from the cold, horrific certainty of what i had done. Eventually, I fell silent and climbed to my feet and stared at the sun, wildly hoping that perhaps that could blind me, that I could feel _something_ as punishment for what I had done.

There was no difference. There was nothing. I was metal and gemstone and glass. There were no tears.

Eventually, when I had got to the point that I just felt _empty_ , I had found that mental 'switch' which changed my vision - distantly, some part of me noted that it was probably filters for different wavelengths of light, ultraviolet, infrared and so on - and I had just… stared. Stared up at the sun as it changed from a green-blue bruise to an angry red wound to the yellow-white that I had always known.

Now, though, there was still the last of the dwarves to deal with. I wouldn't kill him, but I couldn't really let him just wander around either. For one, I like living and it's possible that he would find some way to off me in revenge for his dead companions. For another, as far as I could see around, there was desert, desert and some more desert, with the occasional crag or mesa breaking the sandy monotony. If he was free, there was a reasonable chance that he might steal one or more of the ponies that were sheltered in the shadow of the rocky outcropping and try and make it back to wherever he came from. And as much as I would be happy for him, I doubted that it would end so well for me.

All of which led to the conclusion that probably the best I could do was to find a way to confine him in a place where he wouldn't cook at midday or freeze at night, a problem handily solved by the fact that I had access to an underground catacomb.

Reaching the canopy - and carefully not thinking about the three three corpses laid out there - I lowered myself down the hole that the dwarves had made. It was close, but I could fit.

It was dark, and to human eyes it would likely have been near-impenetrable, but to me the lines of the passageway were as clear as day, as was the crumpled body of the first dwarf I had killed, his blood sluggishly spilling out onto the silvery-grey floor. Another death on my conscience. Another body to bury.

Driving those thoughts away, I strode down the passage to the door to what some vestige of the uncorrupted databanks in my head told me was the Automaton Command and Control Centre, and more importantly where the last dwarf had been passed out, the last I had seen of him.

The door mechanism was stuck, the meagre amount of energy in the system insufficient to get it fully functional, not after waking me up, and so I was forced to simply pull it open. Bracing one hand against the frame and the other on the edge of the door itself, I pushed apart. There was a faint hum as my animator-cores increased the energy that they fed to my arms, and then a squeal of metal on metal as the door slid sharply back.

I could make out the prostrate form of the fifth dwarf - and they _were_ dwarves, right out of a fantasy novel and complete with the most impressive beards I'd ever seen - lying next to one of the five control pedestals that supported the interface. They hummed softly and glowed with blue light, streams of turquoise energy washing up and down their sides. I would have to come back later and see what remained of the cogitator's memory.

Ignoring that for the time being, though, I leant down and scooped up the unconscious dwarf. The weight was felt, but it was more like I was picking up a half-full shopping bag than an entire person; albeit a four-and-a-half foot person. Holding him in my arms bridal-style, I carried him out of the room and down the corridor, towards where my internal map suggested that there would be a storage room.

When I got there, the door was just as inoperable as the one to the control centre. Thankfully, it too was a little ajar and, after rearranging the dwarf so that I was holding him over one shoulder in a manner similar to the fireman's carry that my PE teacher had demonstrated, once upon a time, I was able to pry it open with only one hand.

The site that greeted me was much as I had expected: a empty room, the supplies that would once have filled it long since removed, either by robbers - which I doubted, given how intact the rest of the complex was - or by the original occupants, when they left. Perfect for what I wanted.

And just in time, too, as just as I was removing the dwarf from my shoulder, a low groan sounded beside my ear. He was waking up.

I set him on the ground and stepped back, placing myself between him and the door. As he brought a hand up to his head, still groaning and muttering in a language that I didn't understand, but which sounded vaguely Swedish from the accent and stresses, I channelled a mote of energy into a small glass globe set into the wall. It ignited with a blueish light, illuminating the room.

He opened his eyes and looked at me, then scrambled to his feet and jumped back.

Maybe I should have left the light off.


	3. Chapter 3

I backed away, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. I don't think I entirely succeeded but, then again, it is difficult to not be scary when you're a seven-foot metal automaton with a jackal's head. The Executive stirred in the back of my head with his waking, but he wasn't wearing any obvious weapons which, along with my tamping down on it wherever I could, kept it mostly quiet.

"What are you?" the dwarf blurted, surprising me by speaking in what I thought was English. Then the question sank in, and I found myself unable to answer.

What was I? Was I the human who had died in the aeroplane? Was I the automaton who awoke only long after his purpose was obsolete? Was I the monster-machine that had killed four people for no reason at all?

I didn't think that I could claim to be the first, not anymore, and I wanted no part of being a failed machine or a monster. What could I be, then? Something new, I suppose, but I didn't want to leave myself behind entirely. A rebirth, then.

Crazily, a name drifted into my mind, the name of a god from my old world whose following had shrivelled to nothing millennia before I was born, whose first name had been forgotten and who was known almost exclusively by a name given by the invaders of his country. A god of death and rebirth, and a god whose face I already wore. Hubristic, perhaps, but I never claimed to be a model of humbleness.

"I am Anpu," I replied, my voice a melodic bass, courtesy of the minute emerald in my throat which synthesised my speech. "I was enslaved as a guardian here and have only just broken free."

He gave me an appraising look. "You're a spirit, then? Can't say I've heard of one like you."

Spirits? Were those a thing here? I knew that magic was real - my own workings relied on it - but honest-to-god spirits? I really was in some kind of fucked-up fantasyland, wasn't I? I decided to roll with it, at least for the moment.

"I am."

He didn't relax, but he seemed at least a fraction less fearful. I guess that 'knowing' what you're dealing with gives you a starting point, makes you feel a little less at sea.

"Do you know where the others who were with me are?" he asked.

And there it was, the question that I had been dreading. How was I meant to respond to that? Should I say that something forced me into it? Well, I'd already made myself out to be a spirit, and he got that from me being enslaved, so maybe spirits in this world can be bound to tasks? Sounds like as good a direction as any to take it.

"I…"

I couldn't say it. I had the words in my head - I could _think_ them with perfect clarity - but when I tried to utter them, I kept flashing back to slicing my sword - which I had abandoned on the sand outside - through the black-haired dwarf's neck, only a little over half an hour ago.

The dwarf's face hardened with anger. "Where are they, warguth?!"

"They…"

I still couldn't say it, coward that I was. I was too busy internally kicking myself to react when he made his move.

Dashing forwards, the brown-haired dwarf dodged around me and managed to slip out the door before I could catch him. I turned, hastily following him out into the passageway. He had not gone far. He had stopped in front of the sprawled body of the first dwarf that I had killed after awakening, lying opposite the room where he had fallen unconscious. He turned to me and his fury was written plain upon his face.

"You did this!" he cried "Jierda!"

There was a ripple in the air and then one of my legs twisted from under me. I fell to one side, before managing to catch myself on the wall. The Executive screamed in my mind, exploding with razor-edged hands to grip my thoughts and cut away my doubt and empathy. I beat it back with the fact that the dwarf had himself collapsed, seemingly exhausted. He was breathing heavily and was on his hands and knees.

"I had no choice." I shouted back at him, or tried at least. My voice came out in the same tone as before, untouched by emotion. "I was not in control. I couldn't bloody _do_ anything." I was aware at this point that I was venting my anger at him undeservedly, but I didn't really care. "Have you ever been enslaved, your own mind turned against you? _I didn't want to kill them._ "

We both fell silent, each of us spent. Minutes passed. Finally, I spoke again, more subdued.

"I can help you bury them."

He pulled himself to his feet, still looking exhausted. Another long moment passed before he replied, his voice dead and lifeless. "They must be sealed in stone. It is the way of my people. Are the others above ground?"

I nodded, hearing the faint scrape of the metal plates that made up my neck.

"I shall go to them. Lift Gerdir up, please." he indicated the sprawled corpse. Wordlessly, I complied, hoisting the body up through the hole in the ceiling, and then climbing up myself. It took the dwarf a few minutes to scale the rope which hung through the opening, but I could tell that he wanted no help from me.

* * *

The four bodies were buried in a set of four sarcophagi that I sunk into the stone of the cave beneath the rocky outcrop using my fabricator.

It would have been fascinating to watch the process in other circumstances as the rock unspooled from the floor and added itself to the walls, and then to the four stone lids which I made to cover the tombs. The process was draining, and I was conscious of the loss of energy from my systems - it wasn't a pressing concern, as as far as I knew 'recharging' was just a matter of time, although I wasn't entirely sure as to how my power source worked, exactly - which were now sitting at just over half, when they had been at about 60% when I had awoken.

That was a background concern though, and even thinking about it felt disrespectful, as the last of the five dwarves carried the bodies from where they had been under the canopy to the tombs. He had not allowed me to help him with that, and so I built the tombs and watched as, one by one, the bodies were laid in them, each arranged as peacefully as they could be.

The dwarf - whose name I still didn't know, and didn't think I could ask - passed from one tomb to the next, muttering solemn words in a language I could not understand. There was a ritualistic quality to them. A certain gravity which reminded me of the funerals of my grandmother and my great-aunt, the only two funerals I had ever gone to.

Finally, he slid the stone covers over the tombs and sat down before them, looking at the ground. He didn't seem to have any intention to move. I left, as quietly as I could, past the sleeping rolls, bags of supplies and the miniature camels who were settled and drowsing by the entrance to the cave.

A thought occurred to me, and I chuckled in morbid humour. The name I had chosen really was appropriate. Anpu, the original name of Anubis, god of death and patron of tombs.

* * *

Lexicon

Warguth - essentially, 'bastard', in the sense of a curse


	4. Chapter 4

After I had left the still-nameless dwarf to his vigil, I needed something to distract me. I liked to think that I wasn't a ruthless person and funerals had always been something which had affected me deeply. The fact that I was the reason for the funeral didn't make it any better.

I recovered my sword - a katana-like blade that at once felt comforting to hold and reawakened that crushing guilt over my actions - from where I had dropped it on the sand. Like my own body, it was bloodless, but that somehow didn't make it seem any cleaner. I stowed it in the sheath permanently secured to my hip, and found myself at a loose end. Memories boiled up, of death and murder. I chased them away furiously, by they lurked like wolves stalking the borders of my mind, just beyond the firelight.

For a time I wandered aimlessly, before discovering a sort of cleft which ran up one side of the crag, shallow enough and with sufficient handholds to climb. Hoping that the activity would occupy my mind, I set to scaling it. I had been rock climbing before and this wasn't so different. There were a few times when I had to outright scale the face - and it turns out that a body made of metal-based hypermaterials can't be supported by the same kind of handholds as a flesh-and-blood one - but i managed to make it to the top.

The summit of the crag was large, flat and slightly slanted, with one side rising towards the western heavens. The greyish stone had been long-since weathered smooth by the battering of wind-borne sand, all irregularity rasped smooth, except in the shelter of the fissures which sank down into the rock. The wind battered at me, but I managed to find a crevice wide enough to accommodate me and sat down there, wedged between walls of rock and staring out at a sliver of darkening sky. It was… peaceful there. With the wind whistling mournfully above my head I let go of something I'd been holding onto since I had arrived here - wherever here was.

I fell into my mind.

It was an odd experience. Before, information had trickled down into my consciousness in bits and pieces, disjointed, if useful. There was an element of instinct to it - although instinct isn't quite the right word; it wasn't quite so unconscious as that - but it was still a profoundly strange experience.

Imagine turning inside out and looking at your own brain, except that it was a mental thing, rather than a physical thing. It was kind of like that. Regardless of how trippy the experience was, the end result was the same: I managed to achieve awareness of the store of knowledge inside me.

It was at once awe-inspiring and pitiful.

On one hand, the sheer _amount_ of information was staggering, as was the way in which I could comprehend said amount. It was like mountains of memory stretched away inside of me, containing all the memories of my past, all the things I had done, been and experienced. Faint wisps of whitish cloud drifted over the faces of the peaks, surmounted by the bases of shining towers, crystalline in their purity and what I somehow knew were the memories I had been making since I had been translated into a robot.

And then there was the rest.

If my memories were a mountainous vista, the actual _information_ , the stuff that had occupied the core before I arrived, was like a diseased plain, corrupt data spreading like dark weeds. Here and there, patches of cleaner information poked through, but I could 'see' that even they had veins of corruption running through them.

The process of purging the degenerate data was an arduous one. It was another of those sort-of-instinctual things, but that didn't make it any less slow. It mostly entailed trawling through reams and reams of nonsense information, disjointed images and text that, although I could make sense of the characters - which weren't English, nor were they any other language I had learnt, and yet I knew them as easily as my birth language - made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and then systematically erasing whatever was irredeemable. Which was a _lot_ , let me tell you.

By the end of the process I had recovered a number of useful tidbits of information. One of the most valuable was the design for a couple of other automatons, a small scout and a dedicated fabricator, specifically. Besides them, something else that had piqued my interest was the formulas for the materials which said automatons ought to be made of, according to the schematics. Who knew that aluminium, carbon and silicon could be used to make a hyper-strong, hyper-light material with extremely high magical conductivity?

From those scraps, and a number of other fragments that were mostly comprehensible I pieced together that my body - chassis? - had originally been intended as a kind of combat engineer. Interesting to know, certainly, but not directly useful. Unfortunately, the rest that I managed to recover was pretty much unusable, due to large chunks of it having been erased to get rid of as much of the corruption as I could. There were some interesting fragments referring to the interactions of the form of energy that powered magic with various materials, but unfortunately they were from a purely functional perspective, with little-to-no information on _why_ those interactions happen. By far the most valuable tidbit of information, though, related to the structure I had awoken in.

Apparently, it was part of an honest-to-God spaceship, and one powered by magitech, no less. The name of the vessel roughly translated to _Ambition_ , and from what I could tell, it was originally some part of some kind of exodus from somewhere called Alalea. The name rang a bell, but I couldn't place it. I couldn't help but think that I'd heard it somewhere before, even if that seemed ridiculous.

Finally, I emerged from the depths of my mind to find that last hints of the sun's light had long since vanished beneath the horizon and the stars shone cold and distant above the desert's desolation. It was a harshly beautiful vista, made all the more so by the subzero temperatures that I could distantly feel, like frigid fingers tracing the lines of my body.

It was an alien sensation, despite feeling the cold all the time before. The senses of this body were _designed_. Functional. I got notifications of damage, not potentially debilitating pain. Cold was something I knew, not something I felt. The whole thing was intellectual and, while I had never been the most physical of people, it was jarring. I am honestly surprised that I could deal with it as well as I did. Another 'gift' from the Presences, I guess.

Shaking off my bleak thoughts, I concentrated on what I had learned. So, I could make a fabricator, as well as a scout. This sounded disturbingly like the beginning of an RTS game. I had never been the best at that sort of game, but getting a better idea of where I was and what kind of situation I was in sounded like a good place to start.

I brought the schematic of the scout to the forefront of my mind. It looked like something between a bird and gigantic dragonfly, long and spindly with expansive 'wings' - which were really just channels for the energy it used to keep aloft - and the core-jewel in place of a head, like a cyclopean eye. Automatically the fabrication system in my arm flared to life, probing the surrounding area for the elements it would need. A moment passed, and then the stone and sand around me began to spiral into the air, to come apart into near-invisible streams of dust, before re-weaving themselves into wires of silvery metal, curling into the shape of the scout-automaton and fusing with a swift glow of heat. Abstractly, I could feel my fabrication systems sorting through the elements in the rock, extracting the necessary resources, separating them from unneeded chemicals and reforming them into usable forms. Silicon from the quartz in the granite, aluminium from the smectite and kaolinite in the sand.

The scout took form in my lap, piece by delicate piece weaving itself from the materials which whirled and danced around me. It took time, a little over half an hour, but at the end of it the body of the construct was complete.

It looked more like an art project than the body of a functional automaton, a silvery dragonfly-like thing almost as long as my forearm. The wings were made of loops of wire, layered atop and wound around one another in an intricate web. Where its head might have been, were it more than just a shell, there was an empty socket about the size of a bottlecap and maybe half a centimetre deep. Delicate, hair-thin wires poked in from the back of the socket like nerve fibres and trailed loosely. Setting it in my lap, I set to work on the most important part of the automaton: the core.

Holding up my hands in front of me, I cupped them as if I was holding something. Aluminium and oxygen, ripped from the sand and the air, spiralled in and blended between my metal palms, a minute sparkle of a gem forming before slowly growing, millimetre by tortuous millimetre. As it did so, facet after facet, fault after fault were formed into the jewel's very structure, impossible patterns, mandalas and matrices of atoms forming, one atop the other in a miracle of creation. I lost track of time, so entranced was I by the slowly-swelling patterns, that when I returned to myself it was to a lightening sky and the stars fading out, one by one, drowned out by the sun's rise to prominence.

I brought the jewel up to my eye and gazed into its depths. The cold bluish light of my eyes reflected fractal facets in its depths, the light sparking and careering from one edge to another. A vertical line down the centre of the gem seemed to absorb the light and appeared for all the world like a slit pupil, gazing out upon the world. It was beautiful.

Still, it was made for a purpose nonetheless and, jogging myself from my own wonder, I picked up the metal skeleton of the automaton and brought the gem to the socket at the front of the construct. With a touch of power to the fabricator, the wires lept up to meet the core and pulled it back into its housing.

Now came the last step. I hesitated for a moment, then channelled energy directly into the 'eye'. There was a minute flash, like the spark of static from a taser, and a ripple of motion passed through the automaton. Then the wings fluttered and raised, and the whole thing floated up out of my hands to hang in the air. At the same time, there was a feeling as though the inside of my head had suddenly expanded.

-DIRECTION?-

The thought intruded on my contemplation, the questioning note making the meaning clear. I was floored for a moment. Could this thing think? Had I just made life? Then the memory of how I had been set up - or the body had been at any rate - and I realised with some self-recrimination that it was more like Siri asking if it could book a dentist's appointment than anything else. It was asking for orders.

So how did I give it them? Just think it? Experimentally, I tried thinking an order.

 _Fly upwards._

It hovered upwards, the slight hum of its stationary wings intensifying. It kept going, up. Quickly, I sent another instructions.

 _Fly down._

It sank obediently.

I was ecstatic. I had got it to work! I had, to all intents and purposes, made magic - or at least technology advanced enough that the difference _made_ no difference.

 _Go and survey the surrounding area in a… thirty mile radius. Build up a map, and report anything unusual_.

That was a bit vague. I hoped that it would pick up on what I intended. Thought was more intention and meaning than words anyway, right? Fortunately, it seemed to get what I meant, as it flew out of the crevice and abruptly turned to the left, the front part of its body turned downwards as if scanning the ground, before zooming around the corner.

Standing, I climbed out of the fissure I had taken up residence in and began to climb down the rock, taking my time. I was a nearly at the bottom when a mental equivalent of a ' _ping!'_ sounded in my mind, from the part which I associated with the scout. Tapping into it, I was provided with an image - a video, rather - which moved and dipped as if it were shot from a drone. The scout's viewpoint, I realised. And then what I was seeing dawned on me.

Four miniature camels, each tied to the one in front, and the first ridden by a short figure swathed in desert clothing, hastily leaving the crag behind.

* * *

Lexicon

RTS - abbreviation for real time strategy

Note: For the composition of Hadarac sand, I'm using the Sahara's sand, which was the closest thing I could think of.


	5. Chapter 5

The sight - such as it was - took a moment to process. The dwarf had tricked him, making him think that he was keeping vigil when he was really planning his escape? No, I thought ruefully, I should have thought he'd do that.

Still the question remained, what to do about it. The dwarf had gotten a fair distance already, somewhere in the region of ten miles or so. I supposed that he must have set off as soon as he was confident I wasn't coming back. I could catch up with him, if I wanted to - even if his camels-in-miniature were faster than me walking, he had to sleep and I didn't - what good would it do? Would I just drag him back here, keep him until the food ran out?

A voice in the back of my head which sounded suspiciously like the Executive said that it would be easy to scare the mini-camels with the scout, drive them to scatter. But then I'd just be condemning the dwarf to die of thirst when his camel ran out of supplies, and cold-blooded murder was a line that I wasn't willing to cross.

So what, then? Just leave him? As I contemplated it, the thought became more attractive. He might bring another expedition back, maybe to retrieve his companions, maybe to get rid of me, but, after all, I could just leave. It wasn't like there was much - or anything, really - tying me to this place. There might be some useful stuff in the ship, perhaps a less corrupted database, but ultimately it wouldn't be a particular problem for me to leave. A better idea of where the heck I was in whatever fantasyland I had landed myself in would be useful, but that could be acquired once I found a way out of this desert.

Yes, I thought, that would be the best option open to me, I think.

With a thought I directed the scout to break off and continue its scouting pattern, leaving the dwarf to continue on his way.

The ease of doing so was like a cold bucket of water. I had just weighed the dwarf's life, and then delivered my sentence. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I wondered if, sometime in the future, I would weigh another and make a different decision. Would executing the other order be as easy?

I didn't know, and I didn't want to think about it.

I released my hold on the rock face I had been clinging to and dropped the last few feet to the ground. I landed with a _thump_ , the sound muffled by the sand, and an impact that rippled up my body. I turned and began to walk over towards the remains of the _Ambition_ , buried in the sand. Hopefully, there would be some kind of map or surveyor's data in the ship's computer, if it was still functional.

* * *

The ship's computer was in a sorry state. I had thought that my internal databanks were bad, but they had at least had an area which was free of corruption from which to begin working through the mess – that being my memories. The ship's memory, by contrast, was a barely-coherent morass of files and information, a combination of minor flaws given millennia to exacerbate themselves, the stresses of time on the mechanisms and spells which supported the system and the vast amounts of superfluous data accumulated in the intervening eons having given rise to a true monster of a databank, a suppurating, diseased and hideous construct. I felt almost ill, interfacing with it.

Oh, there was still _some_ underlying organisation in there, some fragments that were, if not uncorrupted, at least usable. The sheer mass of the thing was incredible in its own right. In the end, I resorted to sorting the perhaps-redeemable from the hopelessly corrupt, and just downloading anything that might, one day, be recoverable. It wasn't nice, having a partially-corrupt mass of disorganised data sitting in my head, but I could bear it. It was like a dull headache, not painful enough to actually interfere, just enough to let you know it was there.

That said, there were a couple of things that could be used more-or-less immediately. For one, I managed to find a few of what looked like pictures taken from a very high altitude – perhaps even orbit – and from them worked out a few things. Firstly, wherever I was seemed to be some kind of proper planet instead of some kind of magic-supported flatworld or something. With any luck, that would mean that the laws of physics weren't too different here – barring, of course, the fact that magic was a thing.

Second, it seemed that the place I had ended up in was in the northern hemisphere of the planet, and was towards the western side of a long, elongated continent that stretched around much of the north of the planet. The desert seemed to be fairly large, but nowhere near as big as the Sahara had been back on Earth. I estimated, with my newfound computer-aided math skills – and that was awesome, as I had always been really quite bad with numbers, but now it was like I had a calculator in my head – that walking out of the desert, by the shortest route would take maybe a week and a half to two weeks. So at least I wouldn't be trudging for months. Mind you, those images were at least a few thousand years old, and they didn't have the best of resolutions in the first place. Useful for estimates, but not so good for precise coordinates.

What really got me interested, though, was some of the designs, schematics and blueprints I had managed to tease out of the computer, though. Most of them were only partially usable at best, tantalising hints at a complete picture. Automaton soldiers, magitech weaponry, even what I thought (read: hoped) was some kind of large-scale directed-energy weapon. In the immortal words of Jack O'Neill, a big honking space gun. I chuckled at that, before concentrating on the less corrupted blueprints.

What was usable was just as interesting, if lesser in number. What immediately drew my attention was what looked like a cross between a bracer and a decorative bracelet which, if I was reading the notes right, was based around allowing the wearer to convert energy – the exact source of this energy, I wasn't sure, but presumably from some other device – into electricity, and then to control that electricity. Apart from that, there was also a schematic for a proper generator – a device the size of a large suitcase, and one I was immensely grateful for, as it would mean that I wouldn't have to constantly charge whatever I made form my own energy stores – and two different types of 'forcefield'.

One was a small thing, like a brooch, which would project a protective field around whoever wore it, protecting them from physical harm. The other was larger-scale, and worked as more of a barrier. The field was projected between a set of 'pylons', either in a dome or simply as planes of force. There was a maximum size that the barrier could be – or perhaps a maximum distance between the pylons? It wasn't entirely clear – and it needed to be supplied with power separately, but if I could get something like that going, it would make for a fantastic defence.

Unfortunately, it seemed that either the ship's database was solely dedicated to necessary stuff or only the necessary stuff had had reasonable data protection, as I hadn't found anything which might give me more of a clue to what kind of world I was in. No crew photos, no histories, nada. A pity, but I guess I could work that out later.

Just then, I got another 'ping' from the scout. I withdrew from the ship's database, pulling my hand away from the softly glowing gem that had been enabling the connection. Idly, I noted that it had been almost seven hours since I had started looking through the ship's computers. Time flies, I guess. Pushing those thoughts aside, I concentrated on the scout, looking out through its 'eye'.

The desert stretched out beneath me, a barren expanse of monolithic dunes. What drew my attention, though, was the column of laden camels and cloth-swathed people slowly making their way over the dunes. Directly towards the crag.

I guess in hindsight I should have expected someone to turn up sooner or later, given that there was a spring in the cave underneath the crag and in a desert any source of water had to be vital. It was still something of a surprise, though. Fortunately, they were still quite a way out. I did some quick calculations in my head, based on their current speed and the ten-odd miles between them and me. They wouldn't get here until well after dark. Well, that gave me some time to work with, at least.

Now I just needed to decide what to do with it.


	6. Chapter 6

Seven hours. That's how long it took for the caravan to reach the crag, and how long I had to prepare.

The first thing I did was make certain that there was nothing more of worth in the ship that could be removed. There were a number of rooms that remained accessible, albeit with most of the stuff in them ruined beyond salvation. Apart from the empty storage room and the automaton control centre, there was sand-filled room which I thought may once have been some kind of observation deck or perhaps a bridge of some kind, as well as a stairway which led downwards to a corridor aborted by a wall of sand.

On one side of the passage - the side which angled upwards, towards the surface - there was a small room which, when I managed to pry the door open, appeared to be a cabin of some kind. There was a low bed, set into an alcove in the wall, and shelves made of the same material as the ship jutted from the walls, their contents having fallen to the floor. There were a few bits of miscellaneous debris, fragments of what might have been tools, toys or just curiosities, but almost everything had long-since turned to dust.

The only salvageable pieces were a small knife, about the length of my finger, which had an odd sheen (perhaps I could trade it for something?) and a small statuette depicting a stylised humanoid figure seemingly dancing, hands held high above its simple head. It was a pretty thing, made of a touch white ceramic. It wouldn't be of much use, but I brought it anyway.

The rest of the ship was either buried in sand or barren and, seeing little point in hanging around, I left it, stopping only to pry out what gems I could from the systems. I ended up with about a dozen small jewels, an eclectic mix of colours from red to blue to white, and a single larger one, about the size of a golf ball, which had served as the main 'hard drive' for the ship's computer. It wouldn't be much use without the other systems to access it, but those could be reconstructed later.

Finally, I left the ship. It was the work of a quarter hour to turn the sand that surrounded the entrance, such as it was, into what looked like just another hunk of weather-worn rock, covering all sign of the thing. Sure, if someone knew where to dig they might be able to find it, but theI doubted that anyone would try any time soon.

With the ship secured - something which seemed to please the Executive - I turned my attention to the next matter at hand: securing some kind of good impression with the caravan in the hopes that I could get something out of this meeting.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm no Machiavellian manipulator, nor was I enormously scared of them, but they were the first real human contact I would have since arriving here. I wanted to make a good impression, and not just for the sake of possibly getting some directions out of here.

As much as I liked having some alone-time now and then, enforced isolation wasn't something I wanted to endure.

I took stock of what I could do. One option was pretending to be some kind of god or powerful, benevolent spirit. That was risky, though, both because it was almost inevitable that I would be found out, and that I had no idea how these people saw gods, or if they even had gods to begin with. On top of that, given that I seemed to be in some kind of fantasy world, I didn't know if there were any real gods that might take offense to me claiming to be one.

Telling the truth was an option, but not my first choice. It was unbelievable to me, and I had lived through it. How absurd might it seem to them?

My best option, then, would seem to be a doctored version of the truth. That dwarf before had assumed that I was some kind of guardian spirit. That suggested that I could at least try to play that role, if he assumed that was what I was after I had simply told him I was an 'awakened guardian'. Although, spirits were often seen as evil in many cultures, demons and such. Perhaps a 'changed' human, or something? That could be a way to explain my 'magical' abilities, without needing to know a great deal of the modern world, if I claimed to be a once-human from long ago. I could probably tell them that I had been woken up by some intruders, but I think I'd say that they ran, as opposed to saying that I killed them.

That would give the wrong impression, I think.

Beyond that, giving them the remaining supplies from the expedition might buy some favour.

I stopped, noticing how calculating my thoughts had become. Was this me, or the computer-body? I checked internally. The Executive was still quiet. Was it just a part of being what I was now? That was a disturbing thought. I'd always thought that a person's mind was their own, all that was theirs, in the end. And now mine wasn't, entirely.

I shook my head, returning to the task at hand. There was still a few hours before the caravan would arrive. What else needed to be done before that?

* * *

From where I had perched myself on a ledge facing the approaching caravan, I watched them as they crawled down the last dune towards the crag. The sun had already sunk below the horizon, although faint light still blotted out the stars in the west, and I was relying more on my infrared filter to perceive them than my 'ordinary' sight. Still, I could make them down, a column of dark shapes against the yellow-gold of the sand. There were dozens of them, fifty at least, and about as many camels, each laden with satchels, bags and cargo. A few of the animals had riders, but most were just led. Here and there throughout the procession, torches had been lit, painting the sand in flickering oranges and throwing monstrous shadows across the sands.

The scout floated high above them, keeping watch for any other groups, just in case.

I looked down, gauging the distance to the ground. About eight metres. A long way for a human, but I instinctively know that I would be fine. Shock-absorbing systems in my legs and torso would mitigate the impact. I stepped forwards off the ledge, plummeting weightlessly for a moment, before striking the ground in a spray of sand. The impact vibrated dully up my spine.

Up ahead, the column of people stopped short. I could hear a murmuring of confused voices. I turned up my internal light systems, casting a pale blue radience out between my plates and outlining myself against the gathering dark.

Internally, I took a deep breath and turned up my vocal synthesiser to megaphone-levels. Time to put my acting skills to the test.

"I am Anpu, guardian of this place, and I would speak with you!"

The murmur of voices fell quiet. Through my infrared filter I could see a few of the reddish blobs milling about, confused. Flipping back to ordinary sight, I could see glints off metal. Blades. Perhaps a I had been a bit over the top?

A minute or so passed, before one of them broke off from the group and began to cross the distance between us. As they - I couldn't tell whether it was a he or a she under their all-encompassing robe - got closer, I could begin to make out more details. Whoever they were, they were wearing a complicated arrangement of embroidered and tasselled sashes and carrying a finely-carved staff of dark wood.

The robed figure came within about three metres of me and stopped, standing tall, even if I was still near a head and a half taller than them. They pulled down his face covering to reveal a clean-shaven, dark-skinned face, not ancient but not young either. Late thirties, maybe? I wasn't sure whether they were male or female, but I decided to think of him as male, at least for the time being. A few strands of dark hair dangled down out of the beige turban-like covering on his head. His eyes were a near-luminous amber, a colour I had never seen outside of coloured contacts.

"Selamita, inya lemenegageri bicha inimenyaleni. Nenyi Musabu-ra Gurama Ulukarana."

I couldn't understand a word. He gestured to himself towards the end of his pronouncement, so I assumed that he had named himself, but that was all I got.

"I do not understand you," I said, hoping that he spoke whatever language this was. I wasn't sure it was English (the dwarf had spoken it as well, after all ) but it was the best I had.

"Ah, I am Ulukarana, shaman of the Gurama tribe. We wish only to partake of the water here, guardian." His speech was heavily accented, something between an Indian and an Arabic accent, but it was more than understandable.

"You are welcome to, as well as to take what you like from the equipment and supplies in the cave there. I was awoken by intruders here, but they fled, leaving many of their belongings. I am no spirit, though." I was laying it on a bit thick here, with the imperiousness, but I hoped that he would buy it. Luckily, he seemed to.

"I thank you, great sp- one." He bowed from the waist, the small charms which dangled from his sashes jangling together. "Is there anything you desire from us, in return for these gifts?"

Well, that was better than I expected. Now, how to phrase what I wanted...

"I wish to know more of these lands, as I have slumbered for many years. I am willing to wait, though, until you have set up camp. I am willing to help, if you require it."

He seemed startled. I supposed that spirits might not go around offering to help people all that much. And he was meant to be a shaman too, and I guessed that they dealt with spirits fairly often. Shit.

"I thank you for the offer, great one. We shall manage, I think, though."

"Very well. I shall wait here until you are done."

The androgynous figure bowed again, then began to walk back towards the tribe. He called out to them in their language, and the group began to move again, veering to the right, around the crag and towards the entrance to the oasis-cave.

I sank down, setting myself down on the sand to wait.

* * *

Note: I am using Amharic for the language of the Wandering Tribes, as it seems to share a similar structure (alternating vowels and consonants). I'll be using Google translate, so for any Amharic speakers out there, It's Google's fault if I say something idiotic, not mine.


	7. Chapter 7

It took about an hour for the camp to be set up in the lee of the granite crag. The camels were tethered by the entrance to the cave which led to the small, clear spring and around there were pitched a rough semicircle of white-beige tents. People flitted back and forth, gathering up items and moving them from one tent to another. The only fires were a scattering of torches. Not much wood in a desert, I supposed.

Something I had noticed while I was watching the camp being set up - there wasn't much else I could do, as I didn't want to spook them by doing anything overtly 'magical', and they seemed to take pains to keep a few metres between me and them - was how _tired_ they all looked. Even the children looked almost dead on their feet, yawning even as they helped pull tight the ropes for the tents. They looked as though they had been walking for days with little in the way of rest or sleep. I wondered what would drive them to do so. Was it just how things were, when you were crossing the desert? I didn't know.

Eventually, though, the tents were pitched, watchem set and food eaten, and the shaman - and I still hadn't figured out whether they were a man or a woman - walked over and asked me to follow him.

I was led to one of the slightly larger tents, a circular-ish affair with a central pole which looked something like a stunted teepee. He pulled aside a flap of canvas and, ducking, I followed him through the opening.

Inside, the ground was covered by another sheet of canvas, as well as a number of sacks and bags piled towards the outskirts of the tent. A globe of yellow-orange light hovered near the peak of the tent, illuminating the interior. Facing the entrance four people stood.

The youngest of them - a man in his early twenties at the oldest - sat in the middle, flanked on one side by a pair of older women, about fifty if I had to guess, and on the other side by a man of about the same age, his face deeply lined by both age and scars. The men both wore their dark hair in a tight braid down the back, stretching past their shoulders, the elder's streaked with grey. The women wore their hair in tight buns, impaled by ornate pins.

All four of them wore the same light robes as the rest of the tribe, the only deviations in the embroidered belts that the elders wore, and in the patterned band that circled the younger man's head, faint sparkles of light from the globe above our heads glancing off the tiny gems woven into the fabric. Some kind of leader, I assumed.

"Honoured spirit," the shaman said - I had given up on deciding a gender, for the time being - "This is Sagabato-no Gurama Dularat, chief of the Gurama. Beside him are honoured mothers Getaruda and Nasudara and honoured father Rikitari."

As he spoke, he used his staff to indicate first the younger man in the middle, then the female and male elders in turn.

I nodded in what I hoped was a respectful manner as the group, including the shaman - Ulukarana, I remembered - sat. Somewhat awkwardly, I folded myself into a sitting position facing their semi circle. A moment passed in silence before the young chief spoke.

"Forgive me if I offend, honoured one, but I must ask. Why have you not revealed yourself before now? Both our tribe and many others have used this oasis before, but none have ever seen a being such as yourself."

Fortunately, that was a question I had guessed would be coming sooner or later.

"Until I was woken a day ago, I slumbered for years upon years. In truth, I know not how long I have been asleep. Yesterday, though, a band of treasure hunters managed to wake me from my dormancy, although they fled, thinking me a monster. That is where the supplies in the cave came from. Does that answer your question?"

"Yes, thank you," answered the chief, "If I may ask, though, what manner of being are you? You told Ulukarana that you were not a spirit, but I know of no other creature that might have such a shape as yours."

And there it was. Here goes…

"Originally, I was human."

The change of atmosphere in the tent was almost tangible. All five of them seemed surprised, almost shocked. It seemed that humans turning into other kinds of being was quite rare here.

"I was once a user of magic, and transferred myself into the form you see before you-" I gestured to my artificial body, "So that I might face a great enemy of my people on an even footing. The war was fought, won, and the need for me and mine passed away. I do not remember much else, I am afraid."

There, hopefully vague enough that I hadn't said something immediately impossible and all set long enough ago that it would be hard, if not impossible, to disprove.

A battery of rapid-fire words in the same language as the shaman had first spoken to me was exchanged. The shaman had paled slightly, and seemed to be having trouble keeping his composure. Finally, the male elder - Rikitari, I thought - spoke. His voice was scratchy, ill-aged.

"I must say that I have never heard a tale such as yours, not in all my years. If I'd heard it from any other, I suspect I'd have told them that they'd spent too long in the sun. and yet, I've got the proof right in front of me. Reminds me of the stories my old Ma used to tell me, of the dragon riders who'd split mountains with their magic,and that was why the desert had so many rock in it. 'Course, there's not many around to do that kinda stuff nowadays."

He trailed off with a gruff laugh to the glare of the shaman, who was still unhealthily pale. Still, it gave me some more to work with. There were dragon riders-

Shit.

Alalea. Dwarves. Magic. Dragon riders who weren't around anymore. Spirits, and a physical spirit makes a shaman blanch. A desert with wandering tribes.

Alagaesia. I'm in _fucking_ Alagaesia.

Still, I needed confirmation. Needed to confirm my wild, insane hunch. Now how to do it so that I didn't blow my cover, such as it was.

"If I may ask a question in my turn, is this land still known by Alagaesia?"

"It is," replied one of the female elders, Getaruda, a faint note of confusion in her voice, "Or at least the people of the Empire call it such."

Well, fuck. On the bright side, it meant that I had at least some knowledge to draw on, although it had been a long time since I'd read the Inheritance Cycle. On the other hand, it also meant that I knew the kind of stuff that was in this world. Shades, urgals, the Empire and its godlike mad king Galbatorix. Still, a lot depended on when in the timeline I had arrived. After the fall of the Riders, obviously, but it could be decades until the Varden's open war on the Empire, or they could have already won.

"That is good," I said, playing for time while my mind whirred furiously, "I had feared that in my long slumber, I was taken to a different land altogether."

They looked at me oddly, and I remembered belatedly that it was unlikely that the idea of completely different continents was one which meant much to them. Hurriedly, I continued.

"Still, even if the land remains the same, I have little doubt that much has changed since my time."

The old soldier laughed again, a bitter, aborted sound.

"Not everything's different, if what you said about an enemy is right." The shaman made a shushing gesture, but Rikitari ignored him. "You've seen the state we're in, haven't you. You ever deal with slavers? Took half of us before we managed to lose them." The elder who hadn't spoken yet, Nasudara, gave him a hard glare and he finally quieted, still looking angry.

I was never sure why I said what I did next. Perhaps it was loneliness. Perhaps the fact that these were the first people that I'd actually spoken to since that nightmare of terrible, mechanical, murderous purpose that was my arrival here. I'd like to think that it was altruism, but in truth I suspect that it was just me wanting a purpose, something I could _do_.

"I can help you."

They looked at me, obviously surprised that I offered to help so easily. A Moment passed, and then the chief spoke.

"I am truly thankful for your offer, but what do you believe you can do? You may be mighty, but can you fight a hundred men at once? And not only men, but the spirits that their sorcerer conjures?"

I was ad-libbing completely by this point. The mental script I had composed was out the window.

"I am a… ferromancer. As a part of my art, I can make devices and artefacts to fight, and equip your men with weapons to outmatch your enemies', if they are at all like the ones you yourselves use." I nodded towards the curved scimitars which hung, sheathed, from their embroidered belts - the women as well, I noticed. I was gambling on this being a roughly medieval world, and the materials I could make with my fabricator being superior to their metals.

Another round of rapid-fire conversation followed, incomprehensible to me, although Rikitari and the chief seemed to be eager, while Nasudara and the shaman seemed more hesitant. Eventually, after a few minutes of discussion, an agreement was reached, and Ulukarana turned to me.

"Before we accept your offer, we must know what you would desire in return," he said, bluntly.

"Information on the modern world and the creatures that inhabit it, as well as the chance to study whatever maps you have or, failing that, a description of whatever lands you can give me. Beyond that, I have no need for riches, nor for your food or possessions. An introduction to possible allies, and perhaps a favour to be held against the need for it?"

Another round of discussion followed, which finally ended with an agreement to my requests, with the caveat that they had the right to not fulfill the favour if they deemed it unreasonable, at the cost of it still hanging over them.

Now I just needed to make sure I could pay the cheque I had signed.


	8. Chapter 8

The desert was quiet, at night, the only sound the rasping of the wind against the rocks and the sands.

I hadn't really noticed that much, before that silence was punctured by the sounds of people moving, talking, putting together meals, laughing together, by the belching brays of the camels, by the soft movements of bedrolls through the canvas walls of the tents. The quiet, tired speech of the two watchmen drifted across the camp as they looked out over the desert, making sure to stay far away from me.

It was strange, but those little things were a shock to the system, even after only two days of such silence. It was nice, having people around, even if they shied away from me. Somehow, it made me feel more human.

I shook off my thoughts, turning my attention to the task at hand. That is, making good on my promise. I still wasn't sure exactly why I had agreed to help them as I had. It didn't matter, though. I had promised, and promises were one of the things I had always been honest about. I'll tell lies and I'm a lazy bastard sometimes, but promises had always been something special to me.

The question was, how to go about it. I had already decided that the first thing to do would be to construct another fabricator, so as to speed up the process, but where to go from there? Should I improve the alloys of their existing weapons? I'd have to use the metal from said weapons, as I had scanned the sands earlier, and there wasn't anywhere near as much iron as would be needed to make new weapons. Should I make the personal shields for them?

I continued to think about it as I called up the schematic of the fabricator itself. It was a spidery thing, a bulbous, spherical body maybe a half-metre in diameter and constructed of a delicate matrix of metal spars. This in turn was suspended in a gimble-like assembly which would allow it to swivel as it needed to, which was in turn suspended on a set of eight long, spindly legs. One side of the body was cut away, a conical slice digging into the sphere, revealing the gem which contained the fabrication protocols, right at its heart. The recess was surrounded by another set of limbs, delicate arms which, I knew, were designed both to hold whatever was being constructed and to more carefully direct the streams of matter with the minute gems at their tips.

It was a larger design than the scout, and far more complex, having two main 'cores' - one for the fabricator itself and another for its central intelligence and secondary functions such as movement and so on - and a set of smaller gems, designed to perform simple tasks. There was one at the base of each leg, to exert the force to make it move correctly and another at the end of each of the manipulator-arms. All in all, it was a complex and elaborate machine, and one that would take quite a while to finish.

 _Well, no time like the present_ , I thought as I fired up the fabricator and the streams of silver aluminium started to rise from the sand. I let my mind fall into a meditative state as I slowly worked through the design, staring up at the distant stars, high above. I hadn't really noticed before, but the constellations were different here, too. No Orion, no Plough. Even the moon was different, bigger, hanging lower and fatter in the sky. A feeling welled up in me. Perhaps it might have been choking, had I a throat to choke with. _No_ , I thought _, We can be homesick another time,_ pushing the feeling away.

The metal began to form into the basket-weave of the main body, supported by arcane force. I lost myself for a while in the spin and weft of it, following its formation into intricate, beautiful patterns whose purpose I knew was vital for shaping the flows of energy to and from the fabricator core. Circles within circles draped themselves around the edges, and then the long, spiderlike legs began to grow outwards and downwards, touching the sand and taking the weight off of the fabricator. Silvery mandalas wove into existence, layered atop and around each other, and almost before I realised it the body was complete save for the cores itself.

The shell of the fabricator stood like a sculpture on its spindly legs, held in place for the moment by small pins at the joints. Until the cores were added, it would be no more than that: a sculpture. I cupped my hand, and began the work of crafting them, beginning with the motor cores for the legs, all eight of them, and then the pinhead-sized gems for the fabricator arms. They were simple, comparatively, and took only a few minutes each. Next was the fabricator core, the largest and most complex of the cores, only a little smaller than a golf ball.

I called up the schematic for the core, and was almost overwhelmed by the sheer intricacy of it. Whoever had designed the core was a _genius_ , no two ways about it. It was like looking at a painting in three dimensions, a crystalline artwork, magnificent both in appearance and function. It was more like a furled flower than a gem, layers of crystal laid atop and around one another in positions which had to be precise to a thousandth of a millimetre. I began to gather aluminium and oxygen to begin its construction, building it atom by atom, matrix by matrix. It was slow, painstaking work and more than once I made a mistake and only realised it later, so that an entire section had to be redone. Finally, though, it was finished, and I looked at it through my own eyes, not the scanner of my fabricator.

It was a beautiful thing, blueish-purple shot through with stabs of red and orange. It seemed almost disrespectful to actually _use_ the thing, rather than setting it in some necklace or ornament. Nevertheless, it had been made for a purpose, and with some regret I slotted it into the heart of the automaton.

After that, the intelligence core was almost an anticlimax. Oh, to be sure it was complex and artful, but to nowhere near the same degree. It took a fraction of the time to make and, when I slotted it into its proper place and fed it the power it needed to come to life, I realised why. The fabricator core was exactly that: the core of the automaton, like a heart was the core of a person. Not physically, but in the way that people say that they 'feel something in their heart'. With the scout I hadn't realised, mostly because I had nothing to compare it to, but now I understood that these automata weren't alive, not like a human being, but they did have a personality of sorts. Not thoughts - that was what processing and protocols were for - but a will and a character.

The scout wanted, _needed_ to see new things, to go further, faster, higher, to see more. It delighted in its mission with whatever emotions it had. The fabricator, though, was a mother and an artist. It wanted nothing more than to create, to bring new things into the world.

I indulged it, and felt the swell of its dull 'happiness' as it set to building another fabricator, before the sting of a _wrongness_ , a self-contradiction within the fabricator, flowed through me.

-ERROR-

I dived back into its mind, and there I found the problem. Worked into the automaton's basic intelligence-structure, at the deepest level of its being, there was a blockage, an infallible prohibition against creating more of its own kind. It made sense, I thought, feeling a little foolish. If I was designing anything that had the capability to multiply exponentially, I would do my best to prevent that too. No-one wanted to have to deal with the Replicators.

I poked around the edges of the limitation as best I could. I wasn't entirely sure - some of the concepts which the 'code' referenced were really, _really_ weird - but as far as I could understand, it seemed that no fabricator except the original - that is, mine - could make another fabricator with the capability to make more fabricators. They could make a dedicated 'factory', able only to produce a limited number of things, and no other fabricators.

Well, that was unfortunate, but it wasn't like it removed the automaton's usefulness completely. I rescinded the order, then directed the fabricator - the 'weaver', I decided to call the design, as I couldn't just keep calling it 'fabricator' - to start of a set of scouts. Five, to begin with, so that I could scout out the desert properly and, more to the point, find any other people before they actually arrived. Especially the slavers that the Gurama were trying to escape. I did not want to have to deal with them before I had to.

Which brought me back to my original dilemma: what to do for them.

As the fabricator began to gather material from the sand for the first of the scouts as the moon sank below the horizon, I sank back down into my databanks, looking for a solution.


	9. Chapter 9

By morning, three of the scouts were finished and exploring, and a fourth was half-complete. The Weaver's fabricator was rather more efficient than mine, it seemed. It made sense, since the automaton's entire programming was geared towards that end, while I was a Jack-of-all-trades.

I added another three automata to the 'production queue', a design which I had cooked up while I was waiting for the dawn. I hoped that they would be enough, along with the upgrades I was planning to give to the tribespeople. Last, I instructed the weaver to build the design for a portable generator that was in my memory banks. The first scout had returned to me twice already, and I had had to recharge it from my own generator. The weaver was similarly ticking down, although it wouldn't need recharging for a few hours yet. Having a dedicated generator would make that far easier.

Orders given, I levered myself up and started to make my way over to where I could see the young chief standing in front of his tent, arguing with another of the tribespeople. Snatches of shouting pierced the air. Around the camp, the people had been awake and active for about an hour so far. I had elected to wait until breakfast was eaten and at least some of the morning's chores were complete before I interrupted. Less chance of interrupting something, that way.

Things quietened as I approached. People took detours around the tents to avoid me. By the time I arrived at the chief's tent, a void had formed around me, a space around the edges of which the tribespeople flitted like ghosts, unwilling to come closer but just as reluctant to miss something. It was like how people slowed down to look at car crashes, I mused.

The chief - Dularat - had been doing his best to calm the young man who stood in front of him, teeth bared in anger and a hand on the hilt of his sword, although more in the manner of a threat than an actual intention to draw it. They went quiet as I approached and looked towards me a little fearfully.

"I hope I am not interrupting anything," I said, deciding on something simple to begin the conversation.

The young man - a teenager, really - seemed to bunch up for a moment, before hurling a short, angry retort at Dularat before stalking off. He was followed by a few of the people, but most stayed. Perhaps they were unwilling to leave their chief alone, or maybe it was just the novelty of seeing me in broad daylight.

The chief rubbed his forehead tiredly. "They are afraid, I think. Of what's happened, and of you." He seemed to gather himself, and drew himself up straighter. "Are you here to begin delivering on the promise you made last night?"

Whispers erupted around us, as the few who knew the language we were speaking were pestered by the rest for translations. I ignored them.

"Yes. May I have your sword?"

A little warily, he drew the curved blade from its scabbard. It was a wide sword, sharpened along the bottom edge and with a slight peak on the back towards the tip. A tuft of red-dyed hair dangled from the pommel. He flipped it in his hand with practiced ease and offered it to me, hilt-first.

I took it and ran my hand over it, scanning it with the fabricator. Steel, with a reasonably high carbon content. Hard, but brittle. It wouldn't break easily, but it wasn't nearly as good as I could make it.

Reaching into the blade's structure with the fabricator, I re-wove the metal, patterns of grey and silver dancing across the surface, to the astonished eyes of my audience. I drew carbon from the backbone of the blade making the steel there softer and more flexible and concentrated it towards the blade. I wove it into strands and threaded them through the metallic lattice of the ions - thank God for paying attention in Chemistry. By the time I was finished, a few minutes later, the blade had changed completely.

It was the same shape, but along the edge there was a pattern of wavy lines, ripples in the metal as if it was molten. It reminded me of a picture I had once seen of a Damascus steel knife. Which was good, considering that was what I was thinking of with the carbon strands. The back of the blade was a bright and shining silver, which faded into the liquid grey of the edge. I held it out to the chief and he took it with an air of wonder.

"I have reinforced the metal, so that the edge will be sharper than before but the spine will bend. It will not break, and will be able to cut through anything short of metal armour, and it will probably do good damage to that. I intend to do the same for all of your weapons, if you think it will work. I will warn you, though, that it will rust easily if not taken care of."

Dularat flipped the blade in his hand a few times, and made a couple of experimental swipes. He settled into a well-practiced stance and ran through what looked like a series of familiar movements, seeming to dance with the blade. He stopped, and held the blade out to me again.

"It is good, but the… heaviness? No, weight, of the blade is wrong." He held out a finger and balanced the flat of the blade on it, about six inches above the hilt. It wobbled a little, but stayed flat. "The middle of weight should be here," he said, pointing at a spot a couple of inches below the fulcrum.

I took it back, and it was the work of a few moments, to shift some of the matter down the blade. I handed it back to him, and he ran through his sword form again. This time, he pronounced the sword perfect and bowed a little from the waist, thanking me.

"It was my promise," I said in answer, "Could you please ask the rest to bring their weapons, so I can do the same?"

"I shall." He said, then turned to the rest of the tribe, some of whom had wandered off, now that they had realised that there wasn't going to be some great spectacle, and said something in their native language. There were a few voices which held the telltale sounds of doubt, but first one, then another and another of the men came forward, unbuckled their scimitars from their belts and handed them to me.

I sat down again, cross-legged, and took one up, beginning the process. As the minutes pass, more and more of the blades collected next to me. It would be a few hours before I was finished.

* * *

The day wore on and, as the sun rode high in the air and the temperature soared, the tribespeople retreated into the oasis' crevice, hiding from the sun. I remained outside, working on the weapons. It took a little under five minutes per sword and, by the time the majority of the weapons had been deposited for reforging, I had more than fifty, meaning that it was going to be a while before I was finished.

The Weaver had finished the last of the scouts (I had felt them popping into being on the edges of my consciousness, and then they had buzzed over to receive a full charge, as the Weaver only had a limited supply of power) and had made a start on the generator. I had had to reorganise the order of the production queue, as the power needed to periodically recharge all of the automata was beginning to outstrip my own capacity to generate it. On the brighter side, though, looking into my power generation for the sake of finding out whether I needed to build the generator sooner or later had lead to me finally working out how it actually worked.

It turned out that my body essentially ran on energy leached from the environment around me, in about a 5-foot radius. The system seemed to focus on thermal energy, but I was pretty sure that it absorbed macro-scale kinetic energy as well. It made sense, seeing as heat was essentially just the movement of particles. I was pretty sure that the same system also doubled as a protective shield as well, absorbing the energy of incoming projectiles over a certain speed, as well as that of energy-based attacks. It seemed too good to be true, at first, that not only would my shield protect me, it would actually energise me at the same time, but inevitably there was a catch. Two, in fact.

Firstly, what the 'shield' could protect me from was limited by the amount of energy it could absorb at a given time. It was quite a lot (I was pretty sure that the protection would hold up against a bullet), but the limit was still there. Second, there was a limit on how much energy I could store at a given time, and as the whole system was based off of the heat-control core in my left hand, i could only use that system to either _absorb_ or to _output_ energy at a given time, not both. The upshot of this was that if I wanted to jettison energy I'd need another way, or I'd have to drop my shield.

All in all, it was good to know how things worked - that way I could plan around the limitations - but it was a little disappointing that I wasn't properly invincible.

 _Still,_ , I thought, _I can hardly complain. Imagine if I'd ended up here as a human._

I stopped at that thought, pausing in my reconstruction of the small blade on my lap. I hadn't really thought about it before now, but if I had been human I almost certainly would have died, whether from thirst of the heat. It was a little uncomfortable even to think it - it felt almost disrespectful to humans, somehow - but I was _glad_ , in a way, that I wasn't human anymore. I had been interested in transhumanism, back in _my_ world, but it was different, very different, to be living it.

A strange thought. Not one I wanted to dwell on too much. I returned to the task at hand, losing myself in the weft of the metal.

* * *

It was the afternoon, and I was on the thirty-fourth sword when I registered the nudge on my shoulder.

I drew myself out of my fuge and turned to look. There, standing next to me after having quickly jumped back, was a young boy, maybe about five. Behind him, a small gaggle of other children stood, looking half-afraid and half curious.

I put the sword down and turned towards them properly.

"Hello," I said.

It was a little awkward, I'll admit, but then i never claimed to be the most suave of individuals.

Fortunately it seemed to do the job, even if the children only had a few words of English - I should probably just start calling it 'common' - between them. They babbled at me and each other, interspersing their chatter with the occasional understandable word ('big' cropped up a lot, as well as 'why') and I did my best to figure out what they were saying.

In the end I gave up and decided to just give them something to play with, hoping to distract them so I could get on with what I was doing. I used my fabricator to call up some of the sand, not bothering to separate it into elements, and crafted it into a little sandstone statuette - a dog, with long, pointed ears and a tail sticking straight out behind it. It was the work of only a few seconds, seeing as it was neither large nor complex, and was about the size of a kitten. I handed it to the child at the front, a boy I thought was probably around seven.

He took it with an air of wonder and showed it off to the rest like a trophy of conquest, talking a mile a minute with a grin that fairly split his face in two. Internally, I grinned a little too, and felt something loosen.

Another of the children sidled up to me and pulled on my arm. I looked down at her.

"Inē degimo ānidi sewi līnorewi yemīchilewi inidēti newi?"*

I shook my head and shrugged, signalling incomprehension. She cocked her head to the side, then frowned.

"Weyo… more," she pointed at the figure of the dog, and then at herself.

Understanding, I made another figure, this time of a cat, standing up and with its tail curled around its body. She took it with an expression the same expression of wonder as the other boy. Within minutes, I had made an entire menagerie of animals, and was laughing along as the children flocked around me, playacting animals for me to make.

We were interrupted, though, by a shout.

"Lijohi! Lij _o_ hi!"

Another figure appeared around one of the tents, a girl with the same dark skin as the rest, her black hair pulled back into something a bit like a ponytail. She caught sight of the children, then me, and I could see the moment when she registered my presence. She seized up, stopping mid-shout, and paused, before mustering the courage to come forward, bowing as she did so.

I held up a hand in greeting. "Hello. Were you looking for the children?" I said, gesturing towards the children. They hugged their stone toys to them and clustered around me.

"Yes, yes thank you," she replied, seeming to calm down a little. "They run away from… weyo… the… hole." Ah, the cave. Well, I guess I could understand not wanting to be cooped up in a cave for any longer than necessary, especially if I was a child. "They were not trouble, I wish?"

"I hope, I think you mean," I corrected her thoughtlessly, distracted by one of the children pulling on my arm again, then realised.

"Ah, thank you," she said, grinning a little uncertainly. The silence stretched for a moment, then I realised that I had not introduced myself to her and latched onto that.

"I am Anpu. It is good to meet you." I bowed as she had earlier, hoping that I wasn't doing something horrendously wrong.

"I amTaruma," she replied, the last of the uncertainty leaving her voice with the familiar ritual of exchanging names, "It is good to meet you as well."

* * *

Lexicon

Inē degimo ānidi sewi līnorewi yemīchilewi inidēti newi? - Can I have one too?

Weyo - um

Lijohi - children


	10. Chapter 10

Taruma, apprentice to the Honoured Mother Getaruda in the arts of healing and the applications of herblore, was curious.

She was an inquisitive soul by nature - it had been her constant and unrepentant sneaking into Getaruda's stocks when she was younger that had eventually persuaded the older woman to take her on as an apprentice, even if only (in the herbalist's words) "To stop you poisoning yourself by accident" - and the mysterious Anpu, the metal man, the not-human-not-spirit had certainly piqued her interest. She hadn't gone near him at first, thanks to the shaman's warning to be careful, but then, when she had been sent out to retrieve the children who had snuck out during the midday _tinishi inik'ilifi_ , she had stumbled across the intimidating being who was, of all things, playing with the children.

She had seen the powers he had demonstrated earlier, reforging the chief's sword within minutes, with no need for hammer, forge or anvil, and she had seen him using them again later on, as he methodically worked through the pile of weapons next to him. And when she had first seen him, up to his middle in children, he had been using that self-same power to shape the sand into toys for them.

After their somewhat awkward introduction, the jackal-headed man had helped her to herd the children back to their parents before returning to his self-appointed task, continuing tirelessly as the sun sank lower and lower towards the horizon. By then, she'd managed to find some free time and to pluck up the courage to go and talk to him again.

She found him where she had left him earlier, the pile of grey-patterned swords to his left having grown, while the plainer ones to his right had decreased in number. Greetings had been exchanged, again, and before she knew it, they were talking about whatever came to mind, even as he reforged another of the tribe's blades.

"What is it like, living in a desert?" he was saying, as he slowly ran his hand over yet another of the blades, causing the now-familiar grey ripples to seemingly bubble up from within the metal.

Taruma thought for a moment, then answered. "It's… Hard, I suppose. We don't usually come this far north, though. Usually, we live on the plains further south. It's greener there. Grass as far as you can see, and we used to have goats as well. You could see the Beors on the horizon." The young herbalist broke off, a choking feeling in her throat as she remembered the goats fleeing off into the savannah as the slavers bore down on them.

Anpu seemed to register her discomfort and stayed silent for a while. The sword was re-sheathed and placed at his side and another one was taken up. Then the metallic being spoke again.

"I am sorry. I was never the best with people, and I do not think that my current situation lends itself well to sensitivity." His voice had a ring of sincerity, alongside the odd harmonics which seemed to underlie all of his speech. Taruma nodded, remaining silent. "Changing the subject entirely, what do you know of magic? I know how it was used in my time -" He gestured to himself "I am an example of such - but I know little of how the art may have evolved over time."

"Evolved?" Taruma replied, feeling out the sound of the unfamiliar word. She had never been the best at the common tongue. The sounds were strange.

"Changed."

"Oh. Well, there's lots of different kinds of magic. Ulukarana's a shaman, which means he speaks with the spirits and sometimes he asks them to help him, but there's also people who enslave spirits as well. There's some people who can just _do_ magic without having to bother with other stuff. I'm learning herbs from Mother Getaruda, but I don't know if that's really magic. I mean, sure you can heal people with them, but it just helps. Ulukarana can heal a wound like _that._ " she snapped her fingers "He gets very tired though."

The canine visage turned towards her, transfixing her for a moment with its glassy blue eyes. "It depends on what you think magic is, I suppose. There was a famous man of my time who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Everything is relative, and magic is only what is not understood." He trailed off, an odd tone in his voice, then rallied. "What have you learned so far then, O mistress of magic?"

Taruma smiled, and told him of the poultices that she helped to make, and how they stank and stained her hands. She told him of the potions that could flush poison from the body, which she did not yet know how to make, and of the glass vessels which Getaruda kept safe and secure, wrapped reverently in lengths of soft cloth. She told him of the brews which the old herbalist had mentioned in passing, or as stories. Seithr oil, which burned only living things. Potions which could conjure love, or make a man's skin like iron. Ointments which would let one walk through fire, or to charm any who come near them. The sun sank and the swords moved, one by one, from one pile to another as she spoke, interspersed with the occasional question or comment from the stoic metal man.

The call went out that dinner was ready, and Taruma went to answer, surprised that so much time had passed. The meal was a broth made from the dwindling stores of cured meat, thin and unsatisfying. There was talk of killing one of the camels to eat, but it had come to nothing before the young herbalist had finished her meal and returned to Anpu, intending to continue their conversation.

Before she could reach the open space where the metal man sat, however, an arm shot out of the darkness between two of the tents and grabbed her own, pulling her into the gap between them. Her eyes met the face of a young warrior, Loseru. She remembered when they were younger, how Loseru used to charge around the camp, wooden sword held high. She remembered fighting with him over who got to be Vrael and who got to be Galbatorix, and how they had a silent agreement that Vrael _should_ have won, and made it so when they playacted the Rider's battle.

She pulled her arm from his grip and he let her. "What do you want?" she asked, irritated.

"You shouldn't spend so much time with him." He nodded in the direction of Anpu. "He's dangerous. He's not of the tribe. We can't trust some random… thing that turned up out of nowhere." There was something in his eyes, Taruma realised, concern blended with fear and bravado.

"He want to help us though, doesn't he?" she replied, trying to calm the agitated youth.

"He _says_ he wants to help us," he countered. "We don't know what he really wants. He says he's not a spirit, but how do we know he's not some kind of shade or something." He stepped back, taking a breath. "Look, I just don't trust him, alright?"

Taruma was about to reply, but before she could a voice tore through the camp at an inhuman volume and with the same odd sub-harmonics that she had become used to in Anpu's voice.

" **Chief Dularat! The swords are finished. I would hear your plans as to what should be done."**

There was a moment's quiet in the pronouncement's wake, then an indeterminate commotion of noise. She turned back to Loseru, but he was already leaving, striding past her with his face set hard.

* * *

Lexicon

tinishi inik'ilifi - nap. Used here much like the Spanish concept of a 'siesta'; A nap or period of lessened activity during the hottest part of the day.


	11. Chapter 11

I laid the reforged weapons out side-by-side on the sand as the tribe trickled into the open space in front of the chief's tent. For the most part, they seemed uncertain of what exactly to do. I stepped back, away from the swords, and gestured to them, inviting the tribespeople to take them. They did, one by one at first, then more quickly.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of Dularat, flanked on one side by Ulukarana and on the other by the elders. I made my way over towards them, carving a swathe through the milling people.

"I have discovered the location of the group whom I believe are the slavers which drove you out here," I said quietly. "I wanted to know what you wanted to do with that information."

"Come to my tent," he replied, bluntly. I nodded and followed, ducking under the canvas covering. The voices of the people outside dulled slightly as the cloth fell back into place, but they were still easily audible. We sat, in nearly the exact same positions as the previous meeting here. Idly, I wondered if perhaps there was some kind of tradition relating to this kind of gathering.

"You say that you have located the slavers. How have you done this?"

It was Rikitari, more curt than last time.

"As a part of my type of magic, it is possible to make… servitors, one might say, which are capable of acting separately from the ferromancer and are connected to their mind, relaying information over long distances," I replied. "I created a number which could fly to serve as scouts and sent them out to map out the surrounding area."

Looks were exchanged and it was Nasudara who asked the next question.

"Where are they? In fact, how did you know it was them?"

"They are about thirty miles to the south-south-west. As for how I know it was them, I don't, exactly, but I do know that there is a large group, maybe fifty or more armed men, with a large amount of supplies and no visible uniform to the south. They have a large number of people in chains as well, and are just setting camp."

And I could see them, too, through the scout. Rough-looking men setting up tents in a circle around a group of frightened-looking and chained people. Pushing and bullying them into setting up fires and cooking under their watchful eyes and unsheathed blades. The scout was almost 100 metres up in the air, near-invisible in the gathering dusk, but its powerful sensors still let me make out the expressions of fear on the slaves' faces. Far beneath me, one of the slavers grabbed one of the girls. She writhed and fought, but he grabbed her around the chest and manhandled her into one of the tents. One of the slaves stood up, but he was hit on the back of the head with the pommel of a sword and went down like a sack of vegetables. I couldn't hear anything, thankfully, but I was sure that had I had a gorge it would have risen. I released the direct feed. It was cowardly, but I didn't want to watch any more.

I returned my attention to the meeting. A short exchange had taken place while I was distracted and Ulukarana was speaking to me again.

"We cannot fight the slavers directly, at least not on our own, but with an ambush and your aid, if you will give it, we may be able to triumph. However, this depends on what you can do in battle. What are your intentions?"

I told them my plan.

* * *

Another night passed and the last of the production was finished. I had the Weaver add a set of tall spurs on top of its own body, upon which I balanced the finished generator.

The thing was about a metre tall the same wide and was shaped like an octahedron of silvery metal. Glimmers of blueish light could be seen between the spars of its construction and it constantly emitted a low hum. On top of the Weaver, it made for an ungainly sight, the spidery automaton carrying a geometric shape nearly as large as itself.

When the thing wobbled out from where I had concealed it in one of the smaller crevices of the granite crag, it earned a great number of worried cries and drawn weapons by the tribe who were busy loading up the tents onto the camels that they had remaining. It took nearly a quarter of an hour to assure them that the Weaver was mine and that it was under my control, and even then they gave it the same wide berth that they gave me.

It was mid-morning by the time we were ready to set off. The great worm of camels, men, women and children wound its way slowly up the dune to the south, led by Dularat riding his camel. I walked alongside the convoy about halfway down its length. Next to me, the Weaver daintily ambled along, the sand drawing up beneath its feet and hardening into momentary platforms before subsiding back into amorphousness.

We didn't have enough supplies to feed and water an expedition out to the slavers, then back to the crag and then another journey with the whole tribe. Accordingly, the plan was to bring the whole tribe near to where the slavers were, close enough that we could attack but not so far that they couldn't escape if they needed to. We would attack and try to drive off the slavers. If we failed, then the tribe should be able to get to the nearest major trading outpost and - hopefully - be able to purchase necessary supplies and livestock with what they had managed to keep hold of when they were first attacked. If we succeeded, we would simply go ahead to the outpost all together.

I was rather curious about the place, myself. They called it Yenigidi Ketama, which apparently translated to 'trading city'. However, if I recalled the map of Alagaesia correctly, the nearest city to us was one of the Surdan cities, and they all had names of their own. Idly, I sent one of my six scouts out in that general direction, towards the southeast. Already I could make out the shapes of the Beors through its senses. I'd honestly never seen a real mountain range before, the closest I'd come being Mt. Teide on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Even if I had, though, I thought I would have still found them incredible. They truly were monumental, even when all that could be seen of them was a greyish haze.

As the day wore on, the dunes began to become smaller and the sand more compacted. Mesas and spurs of rock stabbed up from the landscape with increasing regularity, casting dark shadows which grew shorter and shorter as the sun rose towards its zenith. We slowed to a crawl in the hottest part of the day. I felt fine, but everyone else began to flag. I activated my thermal control system and did my best to shift the heat away from the convoy. It worked, at least in the area around me, but it still wasn't all that much. The sand slowly began to subside into hard, cracked ground strewn with jagged rocks, all blazing orange, brown and yellow beneath the merciless gaze of the sun.

Sometime around then, Taruma found me again and we struck up a conversation, the topic meandering this way and that. I liked her, liked the way that she was always eager to learn more. We learned from each other, in fact. I told her a little of the basics of chemistry and regaled her with tales of the 'wonders of my time', in reality just things from the modern world, from aeroplanes to flush toilets. She, in turn, told me what she knew of this world and about some of the things she was learning under Getaruda. I was curious, as I knew that a number of the concoctions she was talking about would be nearly - if not entirely - impossible in my world, pointing to magic being involved in them somehow. We laughed often, making jokes out of whatever we could and would. She had a nice laugh, not giggly but not a belly laugh either.

Eventually, though, the sun began to sink again and the rocks' shadows lengthened as evening crept in. We made camp in the lee of another of the rocky crags. Tents were erected, although not so many as at the original crag, I noticed, and fires were lit for cooking.

Ulukarana directed a few people to dig a shallow hole, a couple of metres across. He took his carved staff and used the end of it to trace patterns and symbols in the sand, muttering under his breath. Faint shapes like something between snatches of mist and broken shadows flitted around the patterns, and then the sand in the centre of the hole darkened and then vanished beneath a rising pool of water. Skins were filled and camels drank before the water was allowed to recede again, although I noticed that following the spell the shaman seemed much more tired. He retired to his tent, a brownish-red affair, only an hour or so afterwards, waiting only to have a short conversation with the chief and to wolf down his bowl of stew.

The camp slowly quietened as one by one the tribespeople drifted off to their tents. Taruma left me at sometime around half past nine - or at least a time I guessed was roughly about that sort of time. I stayed awake - as if I could sleep - trawling through the festering heap of a database I had looted from the crashed Ambition and hoping to make sense of something else in there. Frustratingly enough, particulars remained vague, unintelligible or just downright weird enough that I couldn't make much of anything out of it. I also found out that working through the database without the added benefit of the Ambition's computer's extra processing power was much, much harder. I decided to leave off more data-trawling until I managed to get some more infrastructure set up.

Still, that didn't mean I couldn't do stuff with the schematics and plans that weren't near-hopelessly messed up, and I spent a good hour or so taking the levitation units of the scouts and messing around with the things. My first idea was to use them to let me fly myself, because why the hell not and flying was cool, dammit. Unfortunately that fell through as, when I did the math, it looked like the square/cube law was a thing, even with magitech. As a consequence of this, my current power generation wouldn't be able to keep up with the energy demand of keeping a seven-foot tall metal colossus up in the air, even if said colossus was made of metals which were ridiculously light for their strength. A pity, but I kept what I had so far. Maybe I'd find a way to fix that later on.

The next idea was to take the levitation units and attach them to something large enough to incorporate one of my dedicated generators, or at least some variant thereof. That particular plan bore more fruit, ending up with a vaguely motorcycle-like contraption with four thin wings protruding out from the sides, parallel to the ground, and a large blocky bit on the back incorporating the generator, albeit a scaled-back version, just big enough to power the levitation units. It was like the lovechild of a Star Wars speeder bike and the weird wing-cycles from Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I could still see a whole bunch of problems with the design (one of the foremost being that I was pretty sure that if I didn't reinforce the structure somewhere the thing would fold like a novice playing poker with a clairvoyant) but it was a beginning.

I saved it (with a moment's musing on how my imagination now bore a disturbing resemblance to a CAD program) just as the first light of dawn began to peak over the horizon, painting the bare sky in pastel hues of blue and orange.

The beginning of that day was a great deal like the last one. A quick meal prepared the night before was eaten, tents were struck and what few supplies had been unloaded last night we re-packed. By the time the sun had fully crested the horizon, we were ready to set out again.

Time passed in the pleasant monotony of walking and conversation, the scouts which circled us at a distance of a few miles feeding me some really quite breathtaking aerial images of the desert. Once, they even came across a herd of animals that reminded me of the antelope that I'd seen on David Attenborough documentaries. A breeze picked up, blowing from the east, which strengthened over time and blew grains of sand to beat against our legs. As the day wore on, the grey haze on the southern horizon began to become more distinct. I could understand what Eragon had said about the Beors in the books, even with only the most distant sight of them.

The slow crawl of hours was interrupted, at one point, by one of my scouts detecting a sandstorm blowing in from the northeast. We took shelter behind one of the great mesas which littered the landscape, but before long it became clear that the dust cloud would pass us by and we continued on. It made for an awesome sight to our left, a roiling wave of wind-borne dust and grit, the edges of which occasionally caught us in squalls of flying sand. The tribespeople huddled into their robes and scarves and pressed on, until finally we came to the place where we made camp for the second night.

It was much like the first, with tents pitched and water drawn, but there were no fires. The slavers were a scant few miles away and we didn't want to alert them. It was a strained and uncomfortable atmosphere that night, as cold meals were had in front of unilluminated tents. Quiet conversations were had and embraces exchanged between those who would be staying at the camp and the warriors who would be heading out to get into a good position for a surprise attack at dawn the next day.

Equipment was packed, including bedrolls and a supply of food, goodbyes said and as the sun sank below the horizon the war party set off. Twenty seven men, each carrying their own gear, alongside myself, the Weaver and the three new automata I had designed for the battle.

I hoped it would be enough.


	12. Chapter 12

Like the camp where the majority of the tribe had remained, the slavers had chosen to take advantage of the shelter of a mesa, this one composed of two columns of sandblasted rock. In between the columns, the ground rose up into a rough rise which curled gently from the base of one to the other, creating a sort of horseshoe shape. The camp itself was pitched between the two columns, the tents completing the circle of the rocks.

The slaves huddled in between the columns and the tents, watched over by the sentry lounging on the rise. Here and there, the rough men whom I presumed to be the slavers stood and sat, talking loudly and laughing with each other. There were fewer visible than I had made out through the scout so I presumed that most were sleeping. A couple of camels lay on their bellies here and there, and next to a red tent beside the taller of the rocky pillars a brown-coated horse was tethered. Perhaps it belonged to the leader?

The warriors took advantage of a dip in the ground a few hundred metres away from the camp to roll out the bedrolls and try to catch some sleep before the morning's attack. I remained awake, extinguishing the lights which ordinarily pulsed softly along my body and watched for any signs that we had been detected. Before long, quiet talking gave way to the steady breathing of sleepers, and I was left alone with the stars, the wind and my creations.

Time crawled by slowly, the uncomfortable anticipation like something between the waiting outside an exam hall and the coil of uncomfortable fear in your belly when you know that you've done something wrong and you're waiting for the consequences to turn up. The hours wore on and the reality of what I had mixed myself up in dawned on me with a horrible clarity.

I was going to be fighting. I was going to fight, and people were probably going to die.

I'd honestly not really fought before. Not beyond playground scuffles and playful wrestling. My attack on the dwarves was a fight, I guess, and I'd killed then, but it wasn't really me. I hoped so, anyway.

I checked and double-checked my systems and those of the automata I'd brought with me, trying to take my mind off of the confrontation looming ahead of me. I pulled out the sword that I had awoken in this world with and examined it in the faint starlight. A blade maybe one and a half metres long, leaf-shaped and elegant by any measure.

It seemed ugly to me.

Driven by impulse, I brought up my fabricator and ignited it, tearing the blade to threads of whatever alloy it was made of. There was iron, carbon and aluminium in the blade, along with a number of elements and substances I had no name for. I re-wove it, shaping a new blade. It was much shorter, maybe sixty centimetres long, far wider and sharp along only one side. The blade itself was straight for most of its length, then curled backwards to meet the back of the blade in a vicious point.

I directed the fabricator towards the ground, pulling up granite and what metals there were and forming them into a shaft, a little under two metres long. Wires of the excess alloy I had left over from the blade wrapped around it, binding the stone and metal of the shaft more solidly as I affixed the blade in place. I hefted it, feeling the pull of its weight only slightly and examined it. It felt better, somehow, to not use that same sword again. I'd killed innocents with that nameless sword. With this one I'd try to do better, I promised myself.

After that, the hours seemed to go a little faster. I practiced with the glaive as much as I could without being too loud. I'd made a rudimentary glaive as a school project once, if one could call a roughly-cut slab of metal attached to the end of a stick a glaive, and I'd swung it around then too, imagining that I was fighting orcs or Sith or whatever had captured my imagination at the time.

I let out a quiet laugh. My younger self would have thought I was so cool.

And then it was time.

The little 'alarm' I'd set in my head for three in the morning - accounting for the planet's spin, its position around the sun and a dozen other variables I didn't care to go into - went off. I'd chosen the time for the fact that the slavers would still be asleep, and that it was about as dark as the night would get. Ceasing my glaive-spinning, I made my way over to where Dularat slept. I put hand on his shoulder and he jerked awake, grabbing for his sword before he saw the blue stars of my eyes.

"It's time," I said, and moved on to begin waking the others.

Within a few minutes the entire party was awake, blearily pulling on what armour they had and taking up sword in one hand and hide shields in another. They assembled in a rough group, facing Dularat and the shaman, who had eschewed armour for a robe adorned with an intricate network of strings and charms. A spear-blade was affixed to the head of his staff, slotted into a carven groove.

"Men of the Gurama tribe," Dularat pronounced, his voice weighty. "We go to battle, not against honourable opponents but against those who have taken our own, our families, as slaves. These slavers deserve only vengeance, for the damage they have done, and so I shall not pray for them. Only this will I ask of the gods tonight: that our swords strike sharp and true, that our shields are strong, and that any who fall are ferried to the Star-Strewn Land and dine forever with Unulukuna."

There was no cheer, but faces were firmed, jaws set and we began to make our way towards the slavers' camp.

XxXxXxXxX

At first, the attack went exactly as planned.

That is to say, nauseatingly.

One by one, we crept over the open ground surrounding the camp and slipped among the tents. I hung back as the warriors slipped into one tent after another. Muted sounds emerged, and I knew that throats were being slit and final cries smothered. We were doing well, at first, and almost a third of the camp was silenced - and more than a couple of women led silently out of one tent or another - before the inevitable happened, and one of the dying men managed to get a scream out.

Suddenly, noise and motion was all around us. Canvas walls fluttered as those inside awoke and flailed around, reaching for tent flaps or - for those more aware - weapons. Subtlety was abandoned in favour of expediency, and blades were stabbed through the walls of tents even as their occupants struggled to wakefulness.

Before long, though, the first of the slavers managed to get on his feet and fight, and then another and another. The slaves had awoken as well, and were being shepherded away from the camp as fast as could be done by the couple of men who hung back to do so.

Reaching out with my mind, I found the three automata clinging to the Weaver back where we had slept and activated them, calling them to the battle. They spread their wire wings and rose into the air, zooming towards the melee. Then they arrived, and let loose their weapons.

There was a thunderous crack accompanied by a flash of lightning. A slaver fell to the ground, smoking. The light illuminated the automaton's shape for a moment, insectile and hovering like a metal wraith. There was another flash, and another, and then the automata fell silent and returned to the Weaver. I'd not been able to give them enough charge for more than one shot before having to replenish their capacitors, but they made for an excellent weapon of intimidation. Even more so because even if the slavers didn't need to fear them after the first shot - if only for twenty seconds or so - they didn't know that.

The flap of the red tent was pulled open and a bald man wearing a red robe that looked more like a dressing gown than anything else emerged. Held in his hand was a small object, a glass flask. He held it above his head, shouted a harsh, guttural word and threw the bottle at his feet.

It smashed and winds thrashed out across the battlefield, pulling sand up into a swirling column and buffeting at the combatants. The winds swirled closer together and shadows writhed in the forming dust devil, forming the faces of hyenas and the bodies of serpents within the whirlwind. Ulukarana turned to me.

"Bring him down," he said, pointing at the robed man. "He has summoned a spirit. I will quiet it as best I can, but it is too strong for me."

He raised his staff and began to chant. The winds abated for a moment, then lashed out with a vengeance, blowing over tents and scouring skin with flying sand. The spirit roared, a horrible sound between the shriek of a gale and a howl of rage.

"Go!" the shaman yelled over the din, jarring me out of my fugue. I lent into the wind and set off at a run, feet pounding into the parched ground as I set my lights to blazing, the better for intimidation.

I had gotten about halfway across the camp before my way was blocked. A burly man holding a weapon like a club with a metal head emerged from his tent and, spotting me, charged. I brought up the glaive a little panickedly, only to feel a sudden rise in my power banks, even as the club slowed. I caught it on the shaft of my glaive, barely feeling the impact, and thrust forwards.

The slaver stumbled back before catching his footing again. He spat something under his breath, then came at me again. I brought up the glaive in a wide arc and it caught him across his chest, shearing through the tunic he wore and scraping against his ribs. His momentum carried him forwards and the blade sank into him. He gurgled, then went limp.

I pulled out the weapon, feeling a cold, steely clarity come over me. This enemy was subdued, but the sorcerer remained. I left him behind, pushing against the swirling winds as I made my way towards the robed man. He'd caught sight of me through the flying sand and pointed an arm towards me, fingers splayed. He shouted over the din of the wind and clashing weapons. "Flay it, -!"

The rest was lost as the winds whipped faster, sand driving in between my segments with a malicious will. Moving metal ground the grains to dust, but more and more accumulated, slowing my advance.

I adjusted the kinetic absorption shield. Grains of sand fell from the air, losing the energy that propelled them. Not all of them, but it lessened the effect. My energy banks were filling too quickly to be sustainable. Fifty-seven seconds until maximum capacity.

Another slaver got in my way, bringing a longsword to bear. It slowed as it swung, like the club before it. My limbs moving jerkily from the motes grinding in their mechanisms, I batted it down with the haft of the glaive and drove the blade forwards into his hands. Blood coated the blade and he dropped the sword, cursing in pain. He was silenced as the glaive whipped in and then out, the arterial spray from his half-severed neck painting the ground. I moved on.

I felt a red error message from one of the Ohm units as the winds blew it off course and into the ground. One of its wings was heavily damaged. The sorcerer needed to be silenced as soon as possible.

I caught another slaver on the back of the head with the haft of the glaive, sending him to the floor. Only about fifteen feet between the sorcerer and I, now. Over the tortured howl of the wind I heard him shout.

"Kverst!"

An error registered in my head. A set of microfilament wires carrying information from my right eye had been cut. Repairable. I carried on, ignoring the impediment. The sorcerer took a step back, retreating as fast as he could without taking his eyes off me.

"Verma!"

A bloom of heat in my chest cavity, melting another series of microfilaments. My right arm died, falling limp at my side. Fabricator inoperable. The Weaver could repair the damage. I hefted the weight of my glaive in my left hand and took the last two steps towards the sorcerer.

I brought the weapon around in a brutal arc aimed towards his neck. It stopped short in a flare of light, even as the sorcerer seemed to sag under some great exertion. Another blow was aimed at the man's side, then his torso. With each hit, he seemed to become more tired. Bags bloomed under his eyes like time lapsed bruises. The fourth blow halted only for a moment before the barrier vanished and the sorcerer fell like a puppet with its strings cut, even before the blade laid his stomach open like a grotesque mouth.

There was a sound somewhere between a cry of joy and the wail of wind down a cliff, and then the wind vanished, racing off away from the battle with a wild, horrible peal of laughter. I turned to survey the battlefield.

Fights still raged, here and there. I charged back down into the melee with a roar, red-painted glaive held high.


	13. Chapter 13

The sun was an unmerciful, judgemental eye, staring unrelentingly down at the dwarf beneath it as he trudged along, leading his camel. He had left the desert behind nearly a day ago but the grassy plains, while they were infinitely more pleasant to walk on than the shifting sands, still offered no shelter from the sun. The only things which broke the green-brown monotony were the occasional stunted tree, bent and twisted from the winds which whipped through the region out of the desert.

 _Still,_ Carn mused distractedly, _at least they point the way._

He'd been switching between walking and riding periodically, not wanting to exhaust his camel any more than necessary. Poor beast had been carrying him and all the stuff he'd brought from the excavation site, as well as much water as he could fit in the waterskins they'd brought with them. Those were almost gone, now, too. He'd missed one of the oases they'd stopped at on the way out and he'd not yet found the watering hole the expedition had stopped at before venturing out into the desert proper.

He wouldn't be able to last much longer, he knew, unless he found somewhere to drink. He could draw up water from the ground with magic, but he was leery of doing that unless he'd managed to bring down something which he knew would let him replenish his energy. His horn bow was kept unstrung in its case on his back, but it wasn't much good unless he could actually find something to hunt.

Looking up at the sun's position in the sky, Carn decided to allow himself a short break in the shade. He pulled on the camel's reins, directing it towards the nearest of the acacia trees. The beast resisted for a moment before complying.

A minute or two later, the dwarf was sprawled at the base of the tree while the camel paced grumpily at the limit of its leash. He took a swig of water, ignoring the unpleasantly warmth and brackishness, and nibbled on a scrap of salted meat that he'd been keeping in a pouch.

A minute or two of rest passed, the only sound the faint rustle of the wind through the grasses. The horizon faded into a glassy heat-haze. Land and sky blurred across an indefinite border, each bleeding into the other. Finally, Carn drew himself up, back against the tree and opened up his mind, probing out with mental feelers in hopes of finding something, anything, that could help him beyond that veil of mirage.

He'd never been the best at that sort of thing, preferring to focus on physical magic, and he knew that in a magician's duel he'd lose nearly every time, but he was at least competent. The first thing he felt was the familiar yellow-brown mind of the camel, followed shortly by the pinprick-lights of the colony of mice which made their home beneath the tree. His influence spread out further, touching on the minds of the birds that nested in the tree and pecked up seeds from the grasses. Insects swarmed, the minute stars of their tiny consciousnesses dancing to and fro. Nothing big enough to eat, or any sign of a sentient mind.

The magician stretched his mind out as far as he could, flinging his awareness away from him like a spear. Little lights and little minds were all that greeted him. He pulled back into himself and fired out again. Insects, birds, a group of meerkats -

Helzvog and Guntera be praised!

The blaze of other sentient minds, throbbing with the steady, grinding movement common to all the Children of the Stone.

The exhausted dwarf hauled himself to his feet and ran out from underneath the tree. He raised a hand to the heavens, calling out "Garjzla!" A red ball of light sprang from his hand into the air, blazing with ruby brilliance. Carn laughed with relief as he felt the dwarvish minds turn towards him and begin moving.

He was going to make it!

XxXxXxXxX

Carn savoured the feeling of waking up from sleeping on a real bed, below ground. He'd not really thought that he would manage to escape that… thing. The metal creature had haunted his sparse sleep ever since that day out in the desert had left him alone that night, exorcised by the familiar, steady light of the erisdar and the comforting familiarity of stone walls.

Since encountering the patrol two days before, he had been taken back with them to Rakhid Hold, an outpost in the foothills of the Beors. He knew that he had not been overly lucid at the time, as a consequence of both his lack of sleep and by his near-constant fear for the last few days. Still, now he had had a good night's sleep, a decent meal and had - _thank Helzvog!_ \- access to the Hold's bathing facilities, he was feeling a great deal more dwarvish, and he knew what he had to do.

Regretfully, the magician levered himself out of the bed - a bunk in the by now abandoned barracks - and pulled on his tunic and breeches. A quick visit to the washroom and a splash of water on his face and he was feeling properly awake.

Now, there was business to attend to.

He strode out of the barracks and into the bustle of the border fort's corridors. Soldiers trooped back and forth, attending to a multitude of tasks. Directions were asked from one who seemed a little less busy than most, and then Carn began to climb the stairs upwards towards the commander's office.

The way was long and winding, leading up and out of the subterranean parts of the fort and up into the squat central tower that jutted up from the hill into which Rakhid Hold was built. He lost his way twice and had to ask again, but eventually Carn found himself in front of the studded oak door that led into the study, guarded by a bored-looking dwarf running a whetstone along his ax's blade. As he approached they tensed, then relaxed as they seemed to recognise him.

"The commander was asking to see you," said the guard. Carn thought he could make out a grin underneath the other's beard, but he wasn't sure. The guard rapped hard on the door with the butt of his ax.

"The magician's here to see you, commander!" he yelled.

"Send him in," came the reply, muffled through the heavy wood.

Carn walked up to the door and, taking a hold of the heavy iron handle, turned it. The door squeaked open, revealing an orderly room with a desk opposite the door. The desk itself was covered in papers of various descriptions, from maps to what looked like requisition documents. Windows dominated the back and right walls, looking out over the rolling hills of the outer Beors.

"Thank you for seeing me," began the magician, addressing his words to the white-bearded dwarf who occupied the chair behind the desk. "I believe I have some very important information. Information which the clan chiefs themselves may need to be made aware of."


	14. Chapter 14

It was an odd feeling, having a robot poke around in your exposed cranium.

I was perched on one of the rocks which formed the border of the spot where we had stopped for the reunion between the war party and the rest of the tribe. The globular body of the Weaver was suspended in front of my face and the dozen tiny arms tinkered about in my cranium, realigning microfilaments and welding together the ends where they had been severed by the sorcerer's magic. There was a spark, a flicker, and then I could see out of my right eye again. The Weaver eased the metal covering back into place, then blended the alloy with the rest of my skull, welding it seamlessly into place.

My arm was already repaired, but that wasn't really what had been dogging my thoughts, and what I had been using the mechano-surgery to distract me from.

The Executive.

It had taken over again during that battle. I couldn't deny that I'd done much better with it than I would have without it, from an objective perspective. That didn't make it any easier to look back on what I had done, what I had _thought_. I couldn't say that I had been trapped by some monster inside my head. I could compare it to being drugged, but it wasn't really that either. I was lucid, arguably more so than usual. I was just… Mechanical. As if my mind had become a machine just as my body had.

The worst thing, though, was that I really didn't know what to do about it.

Almost immediately after the battle had finished and I was myself again I had tried to get at the thing's programming, re-write it in some way so that I could at least control it. I failed. It was like trying to reach the sun: so far away and so intense that I hadn't a hope. Not as I was now.

I had a handle on it, for the most part. The Executive only seemed to really become active when I was in a situation that either it 'thought' I couldn't handle, or else it simply activated when there was combat and conflict. The first would be easier to work around, for a certain value of easier. The second would be hard, although I supposed that conflict could be avoided.

Then again, this _was_ Alagaesia. There was a rebellion against a godlike, immortal king brewing, and I had a feeling that the conflict touched far further afield than had been shown in the books. I could probably hide away from it. I could wander off into the east, beyond the Hadarac. From what I remembered of the maps, and from what I'd seen of Ulukarana's maps (they were different, and I wasn't sure which was the more reliable) there wasn't really anyone that way who could stop me, or who would want to.

And yet.

And yet, _I didn't want to._

I was in _Alagaesia_. A world where magic and dragons were real. There was a war on the horizon, and I could help people. I could _matter_ , in a way that I doubted I ever could on Earth. That was the curse of living on a planet of seven billion people. Oh, I still missed it, missed the people and the things I loved there; but on Earth there would always be someone like you, and someone who could do whatever you could better. Here, I was unique. I was and could be powerful. I had fallen into a world on the brink of change, and I had the power to affect that change.

And so I would need to find a way to deal with the thing inside me, if I wanted to change this world for the better.

The Weaver skittered backwards at my direction, leaving me space to stand. I did so, looking down at the robed shaman who stood next to the rock. Before us, families reunited joyfully in the cool of the morning. Embraces and tears were plentiful.

"You are troubled," he said. It wasn't a question.

How do you reply to that?

"I am," I replied quietly.

"How so?"

I said nothing for maybe half a minute, wrestling with whether or not to tell at least part of the truth.

"I've not killed before," I said finally.

He turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "You said before that you and your kind were made to fight."

"We were," I lied. "But we were more commanders than warriors." I gestured to the Weaver, and to the Ohms which clung to its back. "We built soldiers and commanded them."

"I see," he said, quieting. Then he gestured towards the tribe, the now-happy families. "You know, I often have a conversation similar to this. Almost every time a new warrior comes back from his first battle. And I always say this: Look at why you fight. Are your goals worth what you sacrifice, both your innocence and the lives of others? If not, then do not fight. If so, do what you must. I do not know what you want, but I think I can guess at at least some things."

His face crinkled into a gentle smile, showing off his white teeth.

"We all need somewhere to belong. I can only hope you find one, whether with us, or elsewhere."

He left, striding off towards the knot of happy people. I paused for a second, then sat down again, thinking.

XxXxXxXxX

I was still sitting there when Taruma came up to meet me.

"We're going to be going soon," she said, a little hesitantly. I looked up, jarred from my thoughts, and nodded.

"Alright."

I stood, picking up the glaive that I had driven into the sand next to me and swinging it over my shoulder. We wandered down the shallow incline towards the laden camels and the milling people. The slaves had been re-dressed once more in the robes of the clan, losing the ragged clothes that the slavers had kept them in. They still looked haggard and wan, but their smiles were radiant. It made me feel a little better about what I'd done, even if the memory still festered like an ulcer in my mind.

I was soon distracted, though, by the conversation which was struck up again, awkwardly at first, but then more naturally. Taruma asked how I got the Weaver to do what I told it, and I replied that it was connected to my mind. In return, I asked what stories she had heard about the Riders - partly out of a desire for conversation and partly out of wanting to know what most people know about them. She smiled, and I knew that I had happened upon a subject that she liked. She regaled me with tales of the feats she'd heard about, of dragon riders battling sea-serpents and evil spirits, of the springs which they'd called up from Du Fells Nangoroth, which had dried up since their fall, and of the rider-made sword of which the Lawgiver of Yenigidi Ketama boasted.

That was interesting. A rider's sword? I had thought that Galbatorix had gathered them all up. That's what I remembered from the books, anyway. Come to think of it...

"How long ago did the Riders fall?"

Taruma's head-scarf moved in the way I had come to associate with her frowning.

"I don't know exactly, but Getaruda said that they fell when her mother was only just born, and she's nearly sixty years old now." She paused. I couldn't tell whether she was ruminating on the herbalist's age or doing the math that my computer-mind had done in milliseconds. "Maybe about ninety years ago?"

That was interesting. So it was maybe a decade until the Varden's rebellion? With error, of course.

"So. What is... Yenigidi Ketama like?"

"It's a festering cesspit of greed, merchants and men with too many weapons and too little to do."

Startled, I turned towards the source of the unexpected interruption. There, seated on her camel, was Getaruda herself, recognisable by the scraggles of braided grey hair that trailed out through the wrappings of her scarf.

"Yenigidi Ketama is a city in name only," she said. "It's two thirds tents, one third half-fixed ruins, and the ruins are the only place you can get a good night's sleep. It's in a valley near the edge of the Beors, too cold by half. There wouldn't be anything there at all if the Terera Nefasi tribe hadn't found the ruins there a decade or so back."

"Ruins?" I asked.

"Dwarf ruins, we think," she replied. "Don't want to ask them - they get all snippety about keeping a hold of everything they've made, even when they're not using it - but there's no race I know with such an obsession with hiding from the sun as the dwarves, and half the city's underground."

If I had eyelids, I would have blinked. Dwarf ruins? I vaguely remembered the books mentioning the dwarves fleeing the surface when Galbatorix came to power, but leaving whole cities behind?

"Ah, now you've gone distracted me." She managed to give Taruma and I a stink-eye even through the face scarf. "I came to say that the chief wanted to talk to you." I nodded and turned to where Dularat could be seen at the head of the column. "Oh, and before you go-"

She drew herself up tall on the camel, the sickening pops of her back audible. Her eyes glared down at me with all the ferocity of my former English teacher as she spoke.

"Don't go stealing my apprentice. Gods know she's the closest thing to a sensible one I'll get."

XxXxXxXxX

Lexicon

Yenigidi Ketama - literally 'trading city'


	15. Chapter 15

I beat it as soon as I could. Somehow, despite being in a completely different world and having a body which could endure far beyond human limits, Getaruda still managed to be scary, in her own way.

That was how life goes, I supposed.

Saying my goodbyes to Taruma, I began the familiar trek up the moving column of the tribe. As I went, I passed a dozen families, talking animatedly in their language which I did not understand. Twice, children called out to me and waved, one holding a little sandstone figure of a horse. Had I lips, I might have smiled back at him. The conversations quieted as I passed before resuming in my wake, more hushed and with a different tone.

I tried not to let it get to me, but it wasn't all that nice.

As it turned out, what the chief wanted to talk about was an issue that hadn't even entered my mind, although now that he mentioned it, I felt like an idiot.

"When we reach the city, what are your plans? I mean no offence, but I doubt that you would be well-received as you are now."

Well shit. I'd been so caught up in the now and the tribe's problems that I hadn't really considered what to do afterwards. I'd considered, somewhat idly, setting up some kind of base somewhere but I'd never really fleshed out the idea. Now that I thought about it more seriously I realised that I didn't really want that anyway, didn't want to live like some techno-hermit in an outpost in the desert. Taruma had been a godsend, the first person to really talk to me since I'd arrived her, and I didn't want to give that up, didn't want to go back to the loneliness.

It was odd, how quickly isolation could get to you. _Company is addictive_ , I supposed.

I realised that I had been silent for several seconds, lost in thought.

"I do not know," I admitted, then clarified. "In my time, ones such as I were accepted." Truth, if misleading.

"Do you have some kind of magical disguise you could use?" he asked. That… was a thought. Quickly, I skimmed through the easily accessible files I'd managed to tease out of the Ambition's database. Nope, no light-bending or cloaking devices. Maybe I could alter the energy manipulation core? I went over the schematic of it. Nope. It was specifically designed for kinetic and thermal energy. I might be able to puzzle out a solution, but I had a feeling that that would take far too long. A project for another time.

"No, I do not."

"Perhaps that is something we can help you with," he offered, surprising me. "You have aided us in a time of trouble and what you asked of us in return cost us nothing. It would be an affront to my honour, and to that of the Gurama, if we did not repay you properly."

I was mildly shocked, and a little touched. Thankfully, I managed to pull myself together before answering.

"Thank you. How would you create the disguise, though?"

"That would be my task," replied Ulukarana, having listened silently until now from atop his camel. He nodded his head towards Dularat, pulling his scarf down to talk more easily.

"Chief Dularat asked me if I could think of any way to repay you, in addition to the maps which you asked to be allowed to look at and I suggested a disguise. My teacher taught me the rites to ask the spirit Atalayi K'ebero to create a charm to allow a man to assume the semblance of another. I believe that he would be happy to work such a trick for you, given his relationship with our tribe."

The shaman cracked a wry smile. "Gods know that he delights in making fools of men."

XxXxXxXxX

The rite to summon up the spirit couldn't be done that night when we made camp, as Ulukarana needed to carve the talisman to which the spell would - hopefully - be bound, so I busied myself in studying the pair of maps which I had been given care of. They were quite different from one another.

One was quite ornate and embellished, small illustrations of dragon-like creatures twining about the peaks of the Beors and odd six-legged wolf-like beasts prowling the forest which, if I recalled correctly, was called Du Weldenvarden. The cities of the elves and the dwarves, which I definitely remembered had been there in the books, were not marked on the map. Understandable, I suppose. The writing wasn't in English lettering, nor any alphabet I'd seen before. The characters were separate from each other and there were too many per label to be pictographic. They were elegant, in a way, with lots of curves and loops. I recruited Taruma for translation and we pored over the thing while she ate, being very careful not to spill any of the stew on the parchment.

The other map was considerably simpler and far more utilitarian, showing only the Hadarac and the areas immediately surrounding it. Oases were marked with little ink circles and were linked by dotted lines, presumably favoured routes for travel. Some parts of the map were shaded with cross-hatched lines which, as I discovered when I asked Taruma, demarcated areas which were under the full control of one tribe or another, as opposed to just being an area in which that tribe preferred to roam. There were a number of small settlements and towns marked as well, scattered around the edges of the desert and the northwest parts of the Beors. In particular, Taruma pointed out Yenigidi Ketama, nestled among the great mountains themselves a little way into the range at the end of a pass which opened out onto the plains towards the northwest.

Neither of the maps were quite the same in their dimensions, and neither matched exactly what I remembered of the maps at the front of the books. Cartographic error, I suspected. Either that or the world was simply different to how it had been portrayed in the books.

Which got me wondering. How was it that Paolini had written a series of books, and there just _happened_ to be a world into which I got flung that, at least superficially, matched his supposed 'fantasy' setting? Was this world some kind of imagining, playing out inside someone's head? Was I in a coma after bashing my head on the plane's wing, just dreaming? Or was this world real, and had its 'idea' somehow made its way into Paolini's mind, for him to write it? Coincidence was plausible, I supposed, if one went with the whole 'infinite realities, one for every possible other choice' idea, but then how the heck did magic become a thing? Was it the result of some kind of ancient construction? Or just a variance somewhen back at the dawn of time between my world and this one?

Too many unanswerable questions.

XxXxXxXxX

The next day was much like the one before, a long, slow walk interspersed with brief breaks and long-rambling conversations. The scenery more than made up for the boredom, though.

The parched dirt of the desert's borders had long since given way to first sparse grasses, and then to golden plains that stretched as far as the eye could see. The occasional umbrella-shaped tree broke the flat horizon and in the distance, the occasional herd of wandering antelope or bovine creatures that reminded me of the wildebeest I'd seen on David Attenborough documentaries. At one point, a small expedition of riders was sent out after one of the herds. They came back with the carcasses of two antelope slung over the backs of their mounts.

As the day wore on the grass became ever more green and the trees more plentiful. About halfway through the afternoon, we came across a small river, maybe three metres across and sluggish with brown silt. We followed its lazy, meandering course for the rest of the afternoon and as the sun sank towards the horizon, illuminating the colossal sides of the towering Beors in the distance, we made camp a little way back from its banks, setting torches around the periphery to deter lions or other predators in the night.

Dinner had been eaten and people were beginning to turn in when Ulukarana came up to me and motioned for me to come with him. Taruma had been pulled away a while before by Getaruda to go and help with one of the rescued slaves who had apparently gotten some kind of illness or infection - I wasn't entirely sure, as Taruma hadn't had the words to differentiate between the two. I got up from where I had been tinkering in my head with the jetbike design - I'd come up with a name, the Vimana and had gotten to the point that the simulations indicated it would be vaguely usable, if horrendously unsafe - and followed him. Over his shoulder, he carried a rolled-up bundle of something furry, tied up with rope.

We walked out past the ring of torches and the trio of night-watchmen, a little way into the copse of trees that sheltered the camp from the savannah's winds. A minute's walk brought us to a small, roughly circular clearing. A small fire pit had been dug in the centre and had been filled with a teepee of little twigs over a collection of wood shavings. The short grass of the clearing had been patterned with glyphs and symbols drawn in lines of ash, all radiating out from the fire pit.

"The space is prepared for calling Atalayi K'ebero," said the shaman, setting down his bundle. "But you must be here for this. When he appears, he will try and unnerve us - it is his way. You must not let him frighten you, nor let him trick you into agreeing to something which you do not want. I shall talk with him, but he may ask you questions or tell you things. Pay attention to what he says, for he is wise, but remember that he lies often and well, and even his truths are often deceiving."

"I'll be careful."

Ulukarana nodded serious. "I hope so. The Fox is not evil but he sometimes plays cruel games. You should sit over there." He indicated a spot on the far side of the fire, between a figure of a stylised bird and a coil which might have been a snail's shell or a snake. I went, apprehensive.

From inside his robes, Ulukarana drew a small wooden figurine around whose neck a leather cord was tied. He wrapped the cord once, twice around his wrist and let it hang there. A small pouch was placed on the ground next to the fire and the string which held it closed was untied. It was filled with some kind of red powder.

He drew out another pair of objects - a piece of flint and a shard of metal. He bent down next to the fire and struck them together, sending a small shower of sparks onto the wood shavings. He struck twice more before blowing gently on the shavings, coaxing the little points of red light to grow first into yellowish motes, then into little flames. He leant back, letting the infant flames begin to catch on the twigs, muttering words under his breath that I doubted I would understand anyway as he placed the flint and steel carefully on the ground.

Maybe half a minute passed, by which time the flames had caught properly on the twigs and were crackling merrily. Suddenly, Ulukarana took a pinch of the red powder and flung it into the fire, sending up a plume of grey-white smoke and setting the flames spitting and leaping. The shaman stood and began to chant more loudly, walking slowly around the fire. Every now and again he would draw himself up and shout out into the distance, holding his staff up high.

The sun had set a little while ago, but as he continued his slow and purposeful procession around the fire I began to notice something. The shadows in between the trees were becoming darker and darker, even as the stars overhead seemed to shine brighter than ever. Within minutes the fire's light was an island in a sea of darkness and strange sounds drifted on the air from beyond the firelight. Like a dog's yip, mingled with wild laughter.

Ulukarana stilled, staring out at a point beyond the firelight. I followed his gaze. There was nothing there that I could see. Then there was a flash of bluish-white light which raced from out of the dark and struck the fire, sending cinders flying. A shadow cast by nothing stretched itself away from the remains of the fire and cast itself up the illuminated trunk of one of the trees. Long pointed ears rose above a vulpine skull, but the body was that of a man's save for the digitigrade legs which stretched out along the ground.

The jaws split and shadowy teeth grinned a cheshire grin.

 ** _"_** ** _Izīhi inya ānidi menifesi-tenagarī ina yebireti k'efo āleni? ke'inē mini tit'eyik'i yihoni?"_**

"We ask only for your aid in a trick on mortals, great spirit," replied Ulukarana, bowing deeply to the shadow-creature. Straightening, he gestured towards me. "My companion does not speak the tongue of the Tribes but requires a way to appear human, in order to deceive the men of the trading city in the mountains."

Impossibly, the grin split even wider and the shadow flickered across the trees as if dancing. Ghostly, barking laughter filled the air.

 ** _"_** ** _A good trick is its own reward. A skin for a skin, then?"_**

Ulukarana nodded and picked up the furred bundle, cutting the ropes that bound it with a knife. He sat down opposite me and rolled it out on the ground, revealing a brown-white hide. The shadowy spirit seemed to flow down from the tree and pool beneath the skin, lifting it from the ground and pulling it around itself. Hide stretched and fur grew out where it had been cut away by the skinner, finally taking the shape of a blue-and-red-faced baboon. Its eyes, though, were hollow and the inside of the skin could be seen through them. Its teeth were long, ebony daggers. Internally, I shivered.

The hollow creature walked over to Ulukarana on all fours, gently unwinding the talisman from his arm. It took it in its hands and seemed to breathe over the little charm. For a moment, the figurine was limned in an aura of darkness before the display vanished, leaving the wood perhaps just a little darker than before. The baboon-creature waddled over to me on its back legs, its comical gait at odds with its appearance.

It pressed the talisman into my hand before stretching up and whispering in my ear.

 ** _"_** ** _We remember you and yours. Do you remember us, shell?"_**

So saying, the hollow beast grinned, its skin splitting with a horrible ripping sound as its grin nearly tore its head in half. Then the fire died, plunging the clearing into darkness.

 ** _"_** ** _Bring me another, some time? I'd love a metal skin."_**

There was a last peal of unearthly laughter and then the starlight returned, illuminating the clearing with pale light.

The skin-beast was gone.

XxXxXxXxX

Lexicon

Atalayi K'ebero - literally 'trickster fox'

Izīhi inya ānidi menifesi-tenagarī ina yebireti k'efo āleni? ke'inē mini tit'eyik'i yihoni? - What have we here, a spirit-speaker and a metal shell? What would you ask of me?

 **A/N:** For the record, Atalayi K'ebero plays a role somewhere between a ghul from Arabic folklore and the Coyote of the Navajo. He's not malicious as such, but he can be cruel, and it is not unknown for him to lure humans out into the desert, either to leech off their energy, leaving them as husks, or simply for his own amusement. He prizes human skins especially highly, but is only offered them in exchange for truly great services, and only by unscrupulous shamans and sorcerers. He cannot take a skin without it being offered him. In terms of power, he's about on par with two of the three spirits in Durza combined.

I'm not entirely happy with the spirit's scene, but hey. I did my best. It will be a recurring character, though. We'll be seeing more of that particular spirit in the future


	16. Chapter 16

I waited a while to try the illusion charm on. Ulukarana had wanted to check it to make sure that the spirit hadn't snuck anything else in alongside the disguise. I'd agreed. That thing had been _creepy_.

The charm itself was a fairly simple wooden thing, about as long as my little finger and a little under an inch thick, carved in the semblance of a blocky little man with his hands covering his face. It seemed to have taken on something of the spirit, though, as I'd noticed that somehow, no matter how hard you looked at it, you could never be quite sure of its exact features. I'd even tried taking a picture via one of the scouts - I'd named them 'Muninn,' meaning 'memory', after one of Odin's ravens - but that just had the same result.

Eventually, after the tribe had gone to sleep, I tried it on. The transformation flowed over my body like a wave, leaving bronzed, _human_ skin in its wake. Wondering, I turned my bare arms this way and that, marvelling at the play of veins underneath the skin and at the scattering of hair along the backs of my forearms.

It was that that point that I realised that I wasn't wearing anything.

I poached a short length of linen from one of the lines on which it had been drying after being washed in the river and wrapped it around my waist in a rudimentary loincloth. I resolved to ask whether there was a set of clothes that I could borrow, come morning.

Then I caught sight of myself in through the eyes of one of the Muninn clinging to the Weaver.

I was handsome.

I'd never been ugly, exactly, but I'd freely admit that I wasn't the best-looking of people. I'd never cared overmuch, but it made for quite a contrast to my formerly acne-afflicted features.

I was tall, as tall as the metal chassis - which made sense, I supposed, as it would make much more sense to overlay the illusion over what was actually there - minus the ears, which accounted for about eight inches of my height anyway. My skin was bronzed and hairless, save for a little on my arms and legs. My body, exposed by the lack of clothing, was muscled and rugged. Not with the bulk of a bodybuilder but with lean muscle and no wasted flesh.

My face was likewise angled, my black hair shoulder-length and slightly wavy. My jaw was square and fuzzed with a short-trimmed beard which swept up to meet my sideburns. I rubbed a hand over it, curious at the foreign sensation. My eyes, though, unnerved me a little. They were the same pale blue as the glassy eyes of my other form, a stark reminder that the glamour was just that - a glamour. An illusion. I could still feel the arcane mechanics of my body moving beneath the fake skin, could still feel the systems which confirmed that I was in good working order.

A machine with a human face.

I snorted.

I was practically a Terminator. All that was missing was the murderous disposition and the mission from the evil AI overlord.

Still, humanity - or at least the appearance of it - was comfortable.

I didn't take the charm back off.

XxXxXxXxX

The next day, we didn't carry on towards Yenigidi Ketama until the middle-afternoon. The river provided water and enough food could be gathered from the animals which came to drink and from the date palms which lined the banks that Dularat decided that it would be better to rest here for a while before continuing on, both for the sake of the rest itself and to give time to repair the clothes and weapons that had been damaged in the battle with the slavers.

There was also the fact that one of the warriors, a young man named Haroda, had suffered a wound on his side during the battle which had apparently not healed as well as it might have. It wasn't life-threatening, at least according to Taruma, but it wasn't pleasant.

I hadn't been recognised at first, what with the glamour, and it wasn't until I took the thing off - a little reluctantly - and Ulukarana smoothed things over that swords were lowered. In hindsight, it was probably quite stupid to not make sure that people knew that I wasn't just some random person who'd turned up in camp but hindsight is 20/20 I suppose.

After that initial drama and a brief visit from Taruma before she was called away to help with Haroda, I spent the majority of the morning tinkering with an idea I'd thought of the night before, after seeing how exhausted Ulukarana had seemed following the summoning.

I remembered something from the books about magicians being able to store energy in gems, allowing them to make use of it later. Some built up enormous stocks, such as in Brom's ring Aren, allowing them to far surpass what they would ordinarily be capable of. Given the way that the particular brand of magitech that I ran on seemed to rely on gems, it was a logical step that the process should be, if not the same, then at least similar.

That had some very interesting implications indeed, especially if I could somehow employ or find a magician to work with in the future, but for the moment I was more interested in something else I remembered: that gems were not the only material that energy could be stored in, only the best for holding onto it.

I had a hunch, one that I was eager to test.

I walked a little way away from the camp, beyond the stand of acacia and palms into the beginning of the grasslands, my glaive on my back and the Weaver following after me. I took with me a plate of broken armour taken from the slavers - low-carbon steel. I spent a minute or two systematically tearing out the grass and the topmost layer of soil in a circular area about three foot across. I wanted to make sure that if what I was going to try went wrong I wouldn't start a bushfire.

Preparations made, I directed the Weaver to reconfigure the plate of metal into a series of metal rods, each exactly the same length and size right down to the atoms.

Next, I retrieved a small device I'd had the Weaver construct the night before. It was a fairly simple thing, a rough rectangle of stone in which was mounted a small red gem (a copy of one of my internal capacitors) about a centimetre diameter. Across the surface of the slab and trailing from one end was a single silvery wire, ending in a simple crocodile clip. All in all, it looked like some estranged cousin of a multimeter.

Now came the moment of truth.

I attached the clip to the centre and interfaced with the capacitor core. Making sure that both my fabricator and the Weaver's were monitoring the rod, I activated the capacitor. Energy - I had no idea what kind of energy it was, really, but it didn't seem to behave like heat, electricity or anything else I knew apart from a general tendency towards entropy - flowed down the wire and into the rod.

The fabricators noted minor changes immediately. The metal rod heated, only a fraction of a degree. The atoms shifted slightly, like they were falling into imperceptibly more comfortable positions. Hmm. Curious. Density increased, slightly. I shut off the capacitor. The atoms shifted back.

It bears mention at this point that when I say I could 'see' the atoms shift, it wasn't anything so neat as just seeing little balls of stuff floating around. The scanner supplied data which I somehow interpreted as meaning something. I'm not really sure I can describe it. It was more like… Ink blots, perhaps? Like, you see and abstract pattern and your mind joins up the dots and all of a sudden you see a butterfly or a bird. If I remembered my chemistry right I suspected that what I was 'seeing' was probably the outer electron shells, but I wasn't really sure.

I activated the capacitor again and watched the change in the material. It rippled outwards from the contact, spreading to cover the entirety of the rod in a fraction of a second. Experimentally, I bent the rod slightly. It was quite easy, what with my strength and the rod itself being maybe half a centimetre in diameter.

Wait...

Well that was interesting.

I couldn't perceive the energy directly - although I was pretty sure that I had seen part of a sensor for that in the database - but the structure had changed. Before, the atoms had crushed together fairly uniformly. Now, it was as if it was doing that in places, but in others the sea of electrons that kept the metal together was split, whole sections holding onto the rest only tenuously. In fact…

Yep. Only a little pressure was enough to shatter it into three pieces, a central piece around the bend and then each of the ends.

Well, this certainly bore investigation. Science, however, demanded more rigour. I repeated the procedure on the rest of the rods. With two I did exactly the same, to the same results. With the others, I experimented with different bends and shapes. Each produced different results. One which I bend into a Z shape didn't seem to have any particular alteration in density, but instead gained the property of concentrating almost all of its heat at the bends. A sharp V sheared only at the crux of the bend. Most spectacular of all was when I had the Weaver reconfigure one of the rods into a ring. At first, it didn't seem to do anything besides. Frowning, I turned up the capacitor's output. A few seconds passed with no visible effect. Then, all of a sudden, a point at the centre of the ring flashed with a blinding golden light before fading again. A few seconds passed before it flashed again, and then again, at a regular interval.

I was fascinated.

I passed much of the morning like that, experimenting with different shapes and configurations. I found that adding copper harvested from trace quantities in the ground to the ring tinged its flashing light green, while shrinking it lessened the interval between flashes. Eventually, though, the capacitor ran out and although I could have recharged it by that time the sun was past its zenith and I could hear loud shouts and calls from the camp.

I gathered up the pieces of metal from the ground and melded them crudely together for ease of carrying before making my way back to the camp.

As I emerged from the woods, it was clear that the tribe was getting ready to move on. Camels were loaded up and goaded to stand while men ran down to the river to gather up last-minute water skins. The tents were already struck and within a quarter of an hour we began again towards the mountains.

XxXxXxXxX

A/N: A little self-indulgent with the description of the glamour there but, really, what the hell. Apologies to anyone who found it irritating.

Also, note that the amount of energy he's pumping into the bits of metal is quite substantial, at least by the standards of any magician bar an elf or a Rider. Witches do a similar kind of thing on a smaller scale with some of their creations, utilising empowered ingredients and compounds to create effects. In a way, they're using a very low level of the same principles on which the magitech relies. In my headcanon, this is what Angela does with the dragon's knucklebones. She puts in the energy to empower them and they bleed it out in a way particular to them - falling in a way that, if the correct symbols are inscribed, interprets some kind of fate.


	17. Chapter 17

Over the next few days, we followed the river ever-closer to the Beor mountains. The flat plains slowly gave way to rolling hills as the stone behemoths of the mountains proper became ever-clearer against the sky. On the third day after the meeting with the fox-spirit, we encountered a rough dirt road which crossed the river at a ford and curved towards the southwest. We took it, travelling almost parallel to the mountains.

It was on the fourth day that the Muninn got me my first good look at what we were actually heading for.

Ahead of us and to the left, two massive mountains stood side-by-side. In between them, a valley stretched almost all the way down to the same altitude we were at already, precipitous cliffs rising precipitously on either side. It must have been a mile high at the highest point, before the mountainsides moved further apart. I sent one of the little scouts closer to get a better view. When it got close, though, the winds which rushed through the gap almost slammed it into the mountainside.

When I asked Taruma about it, she told me what they called it: _Nefasochinimi Beri_ , the Door of the Winds. She told me a story about a man, Hularas, and the spirit that was said to have flung him from the precipice when he tried to climb to the very top. The story reminded me a little of the myth of Icarus.

As we came closer to the monumental gap, we began to encounter other roads and other travellers. I was wearing the disguise charm almost all the time now and people seemed to be becoming a little more comfortable with it. The automata had been hidden away as well, the Weaver and the generator folded up and carried inside a large pack on my back while the Muninn and the Ohms were kept well away from the campe, save for when they needed to re-fuel.

Most of the travellers we met were merchants of some kind, from lone, grizzled men riding their camels to, once, an entire caravan of wagons, horses, camels and at least a hundred men. I didn't get much of a good look at them as we hurried on towards the gap. That night, we camped in the lee of one of the great stony arms that sloped down from the mountains. The wind moaned through the camp, driving the tribespeople to draw their robes tightly around them and to put on woollen cloaks pulled from the saddlebags. Fires had to be built in the wind-shadows of the tents, else the wind just blew them out.

Dularat said that he wanted to get all the way through the Door tomorrow, so the tribe went to sleep early, so as to wake early as well. I took the opportunity to have the Weaver scout out the resources in the boulders and rock formations which dotted the landscape. There was iron in the rocks, and the granite promised plenty of silicon from the quartz. I hoped that the rocks around Yenigidi Ketama would be similar, as I'd worked out something of a plan.

In order to make a difference in this world, I'd need to either attach myself to an existing power - the Varden, Surda and the Empire being the obvious candidates - or to make myself a power. The Varden were a cause I could understand, but joining them would mean being effectively a soldier, something I had never wanted to be. Surda would see me as either a curiosity or a resource and I had no desire to be either while joining the Empire would mean becoming the minion of a megalomaniacal psychopath with a messiah complex. That left building my own power base, and Yenigidi Ketama sounded like a good place to start.

The city was, from what I knew, a centre of trade in the southeast and from what I remembered of the books likely worked to supply the Varden in some capacity. It was a crossroads, and an easily-defended one at that. A near-perfect location to set up some more serious infrastructure and to keep a finger on the pulse of the world. The southern end of it, at least. Even better, the city had a strong mercenary presence, meaning plenty of people that could be bought or employed, and with the ability to make jewels like I could with my fabrication technology, money wouldn't be a problem unless I drove the price down.

In short, my plan was to build up a trading company, both as a legitimate front and as a platform to build connections from. With my fabrication technology I could get the thing off the ground with comparative ease.

However, all of that would rely on making sure that I had a believable backstory and source for my wealth, as well as one for which it would be reasonable to appear effectively out of nowhere. I didn't want it to be too mysterious, as that would invite too much scrutiny. On the other hand, it also couldn't be too closely tied to anywhere which could be easily investigated. In the end, I decided on a two-part persona. I would present myself as a lucky mercenary who had had a bit of a windfall and was looking into a more stable source of income. Beneath that, though, I would pretend to be a younger son of a noble family of the Empire who, furious at his lack of inheritance, made off with as much of the family fortune as he could.

Hopefully, the second identity would be as far as people would look, thinking that they'd found my 'secret'. Plus, if that sort of thing happened to my noble family, I'd probably want to hide the fact that we're suddenly a good deal poorer, so that would provide an explanation as to why there hadn't been news of something similar happening. That, plus the distance from the Empire, would hopefully keep the personas secure, at least for a while.

XxXxXxXxX

The tribe awoke before dawn the next day. More than an hour before the sun eventually rose over the mountains to the east, camels were being grumpily awoken and bags were being lashed to their sides. The faintest rays of the sun could be seen around the eastern peak - K'eyiran, it was called; Red Brother - by the time the tribe was leaving. I had summoned back the Ohms and the Muninn, having them fold their wings up flat along their bodies and hiding them among the baggage wherever I could. Thankfully, people seemed mostly OK with it, given that the automata were really quite light, being essentially hollow tubes of aluminium with a couple of jewels attached.

As we left the shelter of the rocky outcropping, the wind caught us full force. We carried on, though, down the valley as the sides rose ever-steeper on either side. We stopped for a few minutes at a small shrine roughly-hewn into the side of the colossal ravine for Ulukarana to lay a small offering of dates for the spirits of the mountains and the winds before heading into the Door proper.

I had no word for it but _awesome_ , in the literal sense.

It was impressive from outside, of course, but the sheer _enormity_ of the thing was mind-blowing. I'd stood at the base of skyscrapers and looked up, and it was a little like that. There was something special, though, about knowing that the whole thing, the cliffs that rose to either side and blotted out the sun, was natural that leant it a majesty that the glass-and-steel behemoths of modern-day London lacked. Some part of me was contemplating how easily those sheer faces could be turned into the gatehouse of an impenetrable fortress with the abilities at my command, but I pushed that down. I wanted wonder at this for a little while longer.

The winds weren't quite as bad as I'd feared they would be from the descriptions, but then again I wasn't dealing overmuch with the cold. At least it wasn't overly damp. Taruma was shivering a little beside me. Perhaps it was just the change from the desert she was accustomed to?

It was a long and dark walk that day. The sun only appeared overhead for half an hour or so roundabouts midday before disappearing again behind the flanks of K'eyiran's sibling-peak Nech'iihiti, White Sister. As it did so, the rays of the sun licked up the eastern flank of the ravine, catching on the veins of red granite that gave K'eyiran its name. It looked a little like rivulets of dried blood trailing down the rock face. I could see why it was thought to be haunted.

Of course in this world, spirits were very real.

I might have suppressed a shudder at the memory of the hollow skin of a baboon grinning its cheshire grin up at me, had my body those unconscious reactions.

The sun was long-gone and the stars beginning to be visible in the sky above when we emerged from the abyssal valley into a bowl of mountains. The tribe set camp quickly and went to sleep just as fast. I retrieved my scouts from where they had been stowed and set them to scout out the bowl-valley.

There were five peaks that surrounded the jagged oval: the two which we had passed between, two roughly to each side and one about opposite where we entered. At its widest point, the bowl was maybe forty miles across, not counting the upper heights of the mountains. All around, the land rose skywards, the upper slopes snow-clad while the lower were cloaked in evergreens and, lower down, broad-leaved trees. It was quite incredible, seeing the way that the ecosystem shifted as one descended from the frigid heights to the far warmer climes of the base of the valley. Even at night, the difference was more than sixty degrees centigrade.

Through the forest and across the bottom of the valley there snaked a wide, well-worn road from the Door to a cluster of lights on the far side of the valley. It was maybe the size of a largish village on Earth. I guessed that here that must be quite substantial, though. When the Muninn flew closer, they began to make out more details.

Butted up against the mountain itself was a city of crumbling stone buildings, most small, little bigger than houses and with missing roofs and walls. Shafts and tunnels ran back into the stone itself, but most were blocked by crude-looking constructions of wood and stone. Here and there, some of the houses - especially the bigger ones, I noticed - looked to have been repaired. Many of those had lights and candles in the windows and conversation and other, more suspect sounds could be heard though the scouts' audio sensors.

Other buildings had been repaired as well to a lesser extent, looking more like storehouses or maybe barracks. Fires burned around a number of those and men sat in circles, their speech unintelligible. Here and there, cages and pens contained animals of various kinds, most asleep.

Beneath the permanent city there stretched a metropolis twice its size, made up of thousands of tents, yurts and other non-permanent structures. Banners, flags and pennants flew above different camps and clear borders were drawn between them. Tribes or trading companies, possibly. That said, looking at the number of weapons in some of the camps, there were probably some mercenary companies in there was well.

I spent the night making sure that I had the best possible lay of the land. I intended to stay here for a while, after all, and it would be for the best if I made myself familiar with it as quickly as possible.

XxXxXxXxX

 **A/N:** Yes, I know the size of the area might be too small to permit such a varied ecosystem, but there's monkeypuzzle forests in Chile with similar variation. And besides, it's a fantasy world.

A digital cookie to anyone who can tell me the name of Yenigidi Ketama in the books. It's on the map and is mentioned directly in the books.


	18. Chapter 18

"You are sure?" the shaman asked. It wasn't a real question.

"I am," I replied anyway. "I will forever be grateful for what you and your tribe have done for me, but if I mean to find any other remnants of my time, I think it might be better if I had a central location to work from."

The trading city was in sight, now, and we were only a few miles from the outskirts, the great tent-metropolis that bordered the city proper. The sun was almost overhead and glinted off the river which coursed out of the mountain and down through the city.

A look of something like pity crossed the man's face.

"Very well. I can understand you motivation. Remember that you will always be welcome with the Gurama, though. We are as grateful to you as you are to us."

"Thank you." I replied. I meant it, too.

"If you wish to set up any kind of business, I suggest that you speak with the guildhouse of merchants." He pointed his staff towards a large building backed up against the mountain. "Beware the Lawgiver, though. He is king here. He must rely upon the merchants' business to pay for his men, but the Lawgiver _is_ the law here. You intend to buy a place for yourself in the city, don't you?"

He motioned towards the small sack I'd had the Weaver fill with diamonds and sapphires, formed from carbon and aluminium in the rocks the night before. I nodded in return.

"Mercenary, came into some good money, actually estranged son of nobility," I ticked off the facets of the backstory as I went.

"To prevent anyone from looking deeper, I suppose? It's good enough. You will need to act it well, though. If you are discovered, I doubt that you would be pardoned. Dejen Redblade is not a forgiving man." He grimaced. Bad memories?

"I'll be careful."

"You had better be. For your own sake. I doubt you need fear retribution as a normal man might, but I know of at least two magicians who answer to Dejen, both of whom are cunning and know many words of the Ancient Language. The sorcerer who accompanied the slavers gave you trouble, yes?"

"He did," I replied, ruefully. "He could have killed me, had he known where to use his magic." It was rather uncomfortable to think about. After all, I didn't know what would happen if he had severed the links to my core. Would I have just...lingered? A ghost in my own shell, unable to do or feel anything at all? I shuddered a little at the thought.

"Let that be a lesson, then," Ulukarana said, picking up on my mood. "Caution is the better part of glory. No-one remembers the man who dies before he accomplishes anything. You may be leaving the battlefield of swords, for the moment, but you are stepping out upon another. Your wealth and your skills shall be your arms and your armour, but do not think yourself invincible."

I nodded. I appreciated the advice, even if it made the challenge ahead seem that much greater.

XxXxXxXxX

It was not long before the tribe had found its place in the tent-city and I said my goodbyes.

Dularat gave a minor speech about how grateful the tribe was to me for helping them, along with small bag of coins, but it was Taruma's farewell and "Let's talk again, sometime," that really meant something to me. We'd become friends, over our long,rambling conversations, and it was hard to turn away from that, even for a while.

The tribe would be staying in the city for several days, in order to trade what they could for what they would need to get by; chiefly animals and goods to trade elsewhere. Taruma herself had explained that the smaller tribes often took the place of caravans for the merchants, ferrying goods across the desert and the plains in return for a cut of the profits. _When I get my trading company up and running,_ I thought, _I'll see what I can do to employ them_.

Eventually, though, I left the tribe's camp and began to make my way along the lanes of tents towards the city proper. The air was filled with cries, a few of which I understood but most I didn't. Men and women crossed my path, hauling goods, herding animals or children. There was life in the place, a vibrant, dirty, noisy atmosphere that hit me like a wave after the quiet of the desert and the savannahs. I got a few odd looks, but I think that was more for my height and the large and obvious weapon on my back.

On the edge of my mind I could feel the Weaver skittering deeper into the mountain through one of the dry sewers. It found a side-passage and made its way down it, then down and out of the stone tube and into a larger room through a collapsed section of the floor. It looked like it might once have been home of some kind, if a small one. There were no relics or effects left, though. Just a squarish room, a set of stone shelves and a small alcove might once have held a small shrine. It was as good a place as any to begin. I had the automaton set down the generator it had been carrying and begin to construct a proper mounting for it while the Muninn began to map out the catacombs properly.

Back on the surface, I was reaching the ends of the tents. A low palisade wall, half my height again and topped with carved spikes, encircled the city and separated it from the camps outside. Flags flew from its top - a curved red sword pointing downwards on a black field. Men in leather armour and bearing obvious weapons were stationed along the wall's length, although they seemed to spend more of their time talking with one another than with actually guarding the walls.

Following the movement of the crowds, I eventually came to a wide gate in the wall. On either side, squat wooden towers glowered out over the sea of tents. A walkway stretched between them, from which there hung the gate itself, two slabs of heavy wood ready to swing closed at a moment's notice. At least a dozen of the armoured men patrolled the gate or looked down from the towers.

I made my way through the gate without incident, the guards - mercenaries, I guessed - only sparing a glance at my glaive and garb before waving me through and going to deal with a man yelling in fury at his broken cartwheel.

Inside the city the atmosphere was livelier still. The night before I had noticed the wide street which speared the heart of the city and ran down alongside the river, but it was only now that I realised its purpose. It was a market, a huge bazaar that stretched for nearly a mile. Men and women in a dizzying motley of clothes hawked their wares with the volume that seems to come instinctively to stallholders, everything from olives to armour to meat to grumpy-looking camels.

I wandered along the great bazaar, jostling my way through the crowds. My destination was the richly-appointed buildings which Ulukarana had pointed out earlier. I was waylaid, though, by a hundred different things.

First, it was a pickpocket, a grubby child whose gender I couldn't tell in the moment I saw their face. I was lucky that I was just reaching down towards my purse at that point, otherwise I might have lost it. I was more careful after that. Then there was a fighting pit, set a little off from the main marketplace, which attracted my attention with its raucous shouting and held it with a kind horrified fascination. Two bare-chested men were in the pit - a circular enclosure which might once have been a small amphitheatre - and bludgeoned one another with hands wrapped in bands of leather. Both had bruises and were bloodied but fought on to the cheers of the crowd. I only managed to pull myself away when one finally went down and the booths where bets had been taken were swarmed with men either exultant or furious.

Nearly two hours passed in making my way towards my goal. Fortunately, most of the signs on the stalls - what few of them there were - were written in runic characters and, thanks to having an interest in Norse legends and such back on Earth, I could puzzle out their meanings based on the letters I knew. I made a number of detours into the parts of the city a little further from the main market and took a note of several of the less ruined buildings, particularly the ones that, thanks to the Muninn's explorations of the tunnels beneath the city - a city in themselves, in fact- I knew could be easily connected to my planned subterranean base.

As I progressed up the long road, the wooden stalls began to give way to shops and other businesses ensconced in proper buildings, selling a multitude of goods. They all had a look of wealth about them, though, and most were two stories high, although a few were taller.

Finally, though, I arrived at the gates of the upper city, the domain of the wealthy. Another wall encircled it, this time of stone and of about the same height as the palisade. A quick conversation with one of the guards at the gate - a grizzled with a half-breastplate over his leather who glared at me the whole way through the conversation with his one eye - directed me towards a squat building half-sunk into the ground.

Nearly three hours of haggling later a pound of gold and two diamonds lighter, I was the proud owner of an abandoned house whose roof was only partly collapsed and whose floor was less than four feet or so above one of the tunnels.

I couldn't wait to get started.


	19. Chapter 19

Over the next few days, I began to entrench myself into the city.

As it turned out, the city above ground was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Warrens of buildings of all shapes and sizes honeycombed the rock beneath. Houses, vaulted halls, smithies, shops and even a bathhouse complete with hotsprings were hollowed out of the mountain. Apart from the buildings themselves, though, there was very little in the way of artefacts or items. It was as if the inhabitants had just up and left, one day. It was nearly dawn on the next day when I finally made the connection to Orthiad, the abandoned dwarven city from which the urgals had gained entry to the tunnels leading to Tronjheim in the first book.

That had unpleasant implications, such as that sooner or later the city would be invaded and conquered by Galbatorix' duped urgals. On the other hand, it was likely that that wouldn't happen for around a decade and even if it did, a decade was enough time to turn Orthiad into a fortress on a scale that most could only dream of. If Galbatorix could get past some of the defenses I was beginning to cook up ideas for, he _deserved_ the city.

The architecture was angular and functional, for the most part. However, on two occasions one of the Muninn came across a long hallway lined with small alcoves, each of which held an empty pedestal. I guessed that they had once held statues, maybe of culture heroes or the like. As I went deeper, though, it seemed as if the buildings were becoming larger and more ornate. Perhaps depth was a status symbol for dwarves, like elevation was for humans?

Regardless, I didn't go too deep into the city. I remembered that some dwarves still inhabited the lower levels (deep-dwellers, I think they were called in the books) and had no desire to make myself any more known to the dwarven nation than I already was. I had mulled over making direct contact and trying to undo whatever - deserved - bad press I'd gotten, but had decided against it. Framing the contact as one of a power to another power, rather than a power to an individual, would hopefully help to mitigate the issues, even if it wouldn't remove them entirely.

The focus of my efforts, though, was the subterranean factory-base I had the Weaver begin to construct, joined eventually by the second of its kind, so as to speed up the process. I began the construction in what might one have been some kind of feasting hall or community gathering-place, a room maybe twenty metres long and half that high, with grates for fireplaces, four on each side of the room. I thought that maybe the chimneys might make for useful exit-shafts for smaller automata, and they could always be enlarged.

The beating heart of the nascent complex was the generator I had had the Weaver construct back at the crag. I built it into a room directly below the feasting-hall, what I thought might have been a small one-room apartment at one point. Without the requirement that it be portable, I could build upon it, adding heat-sinks and regulators which permitted at least thrice the energy output. Alongside that, there were two capacitors as well, columns of diamond nearly a centimetre in diameter and half a metre in length. They were coated in lead, so as to minimise energy loss.

Following the power plant, the next priority was a computer system into which I could deposit the files I had reclaimed from the wreck of the _Ambition_ and through which I could access the rest of the contents of its data crystals. Its silvery mass eventually took up the wall opposite the entrance. There were no display screens, as I could just connect to it directly. If I ever needed to show someone, I could add them easily enough.

The data I had downloaded to my head was the database of the _Ambition_ , the records, the designs, the science papers; essentially a self-contained Wikipedia of technology, save with a great deal more technobabble and magic. Which was all well and good, except that it lacked much in the way of context. I had managed to debug and make usable maybe 3% of the thing, on top of what had already been serviceable. The issue was that of that 3%, I could make use of very little, as the vast majority used terms and labels that I didn't have the foggiest idea about, save for what I could infer from context.

I hoped that the contents of the data crystals would help to clear that up - a lexicon or dictionary of some kind would be ideal. More than that, a proper computer system would let me offload the database itself and get through making sense of the designs and principles of 'arcanoengineering', as I had begun to call it. Beyond that, it would let me coordinate the workings of the base as a whole from a central location and to offload large amounts of the moment-to-moment running to autonomous systems.

If the generator was the heart of the base, though, and the computer system was the nervous system, then the manufactory was... well, the metaphor breaks down there, but it was important, only less vital than the other systems because they didn't directly depend on it.

I began with setting up fabricators along the walls, just two to begin with. They hung like engorged metal fruit, their little arms hanging limply. I set one of them to constructing a new type of automaton I had devised, as the issue of a resource bottleneck had quickly appeared when one wanted to construct large amounts and one's only means of resource gathering were the constructors themselves.

My solution was the so-called 'ant', named both for its shape and for its function. Each was about half a metre long and walked on six legs. Their bodies were roughly cylindrical, composed of three sections and ended in a gem at one end, not unlike the Ohms and Muninn. On the top of their bodies they had a sort of basket, with the idea being that they would gather materials with the stripped-down fabricator in the 'head', form them into ingots or similar and place them in the basket, to carry back to the fabricators. The first ant was finished by the third day and scuttled off into the tunnels in search of iron and other metals.

Meanwhile, I hadn't been idle aboveground. I had spent the days scouting around the markets, looking for goods which sold well and which I could produce, writing up a mental shortlist as I did so.

Weapons were right at the top of the list - I could easily make excellent knives, swords and so on - although they had their issues, both morally and in terms of the effect they would have on the world. Being known as a weapons dealer would be problematic for reputation, although in some circles it would earn respect.

Food and (clean) water were, of course, high on the 'demand' list, but producing the former would be troublesome. Glucose and simple sugars were easy. Complex starch structures? Hard and time-consuming, and that wasn't even touching on the ridiculous complexity of things that still retained cell structures - meat, fruits, vegetables and so on. I could make a nutrient-rich slurry easily. I could probably even make it look nice. Making it _taste_ edible would be more of a challenge, I suspected. Water I could provide with relative ease. Hooking up a pipeline and pumps to the springs at the bathhouse could be done within a day, and it would give me easy access to clean water. I could even set up a matter-manipulation core to pull out pollutants and gather minerals and such from it.

Then there were other consumables. Alcoholic products would be easy as pie to produce - ethanol was only a two-carbon alcohol, after all - as would more exotic substances, once I isolated the intoxicant component. Both were in heavy demand. It was a challenge to find a place in the market where I _couldn't_ see someone selling some manner of intoxicant. Being known as a drug-dealer - or being a drug-dealer in the first place - was not something I particularly wanted.

On the other hand…

The thought hit me like a bolt of lightning. I stopped, suddenly. Then I moved again as the man behind me bumped into my back and cursed. A grin on my illusory face, I turned and strode back to the half-ruined house I had taken possession of. As I went, I wracked my brains for anything I could remember about sweets and sucrose.

In all my time here, I had seen almost nothing in the way of sweets. Honey and honey products, yes. Various fruits, yes; but no sweets.

Because _Alagaesia didn't have access to easy sources of sugar._

Here, sweet foods were reserved for the nobility, honey being pretty much the only source of sweetness outside fruit. And I had the resources to exploit that niche. With my fabricators, I could replicate photosynthesis, converting water and CO2 into glucose, or, for that matter, other simple sugars. Even just granulated sugar, sucrose, would be easy. I could corner the market, and there was no such thing as monopoly laws here. Given the city's location as a trade hub, I could even expand into other cities - maybe even courts - with relative ease.

From a more cynical point of view, sugar was addictive, as much if not more so than many drugs. I would effectively have a captive customer base. Still, the effects weren't nearly as significant, and with any luck I'd be able to make a killing - and more importantly, a reputation.

With a thought, I set the Weavers to setting up facilities for sugar production. One carved a long, deep vat into the floor of the hall and created a rail for one of the fabricators to run over it while the other began the work of setting up systems to bring water from the springs.

There was money to be made.

Two days later, and six since I had arrived in the city, I was ready to set up my stall.


	20. Chapter 20

I got to the marketplace long before the sun had risen, before even the first rays felt their way over the eastern mountains. There was already the beginnings of a hubbub, but it was far quieter than it would become.

My stall was a fairly simple thing, if elegant in its own way. Cloth purchased in the market the day before was draped over a wooden frame to form a canopy, while my products - a dozen sacks of granulated sugar and nearly fifty pounds of a kind of minty sugar-cake, shaped into small rounds about four inches across and half an inch thick - were laid out on a rug beneath.

Pulling out a circular metal tray I had had fabricated, I placed it on the floor, then put a small bowl on top of it. I filled the bowl with a heaped mound of sugar and laid out a dozen of the sugar-cakes next to it. Next came a small table, a set of scales and weights and a small scoop, to measure out the granulated sugar, along with bags to sell it in. Finally, I draped a banner across the front of the stall, hanging from the canopy. On it, I had written 'Sweet flavourings here! Free samples!" To my shame, I had had to employ a merchant's son to write out the message, as my understanding of the runes was apparently worse than I had thought it was. Still, I'd managed to get him to write out a kind of 'alphabet', with him sounding out the characters, so hopefully I'd be fixing that problem soon-ish.

I situated myself in the junction of two walls and leant back to wait for the customers to arrive. It reminded me of selling old toys at a car boot sale when I was younger. I grinned a little.

As the morning wore on, more and more people began to emerge into the marketplace, mostly stallholders at first but slowly the flow of buyers began to increase as well. Before long, the market was as colourfully riotous as always, and just as noisy. Men, women and children milled here and there, dressed in every colour under the sun. It was a timeless tableau of greed and need, supply and demand.

Unfortunately for me, my passive marketing strategy didn't seem to be doing much. I got a few looks, a few people stopping to examine the wares in passing, but no-one seemed to want to try the sugar. Perhaps it looked too much like drugs or something? Eventually, I was forced to bow to necessity and make use of the oldest and most venerable trick in the stallholder's book.

Namely, hawking your wares at the top of your voice. Fortunately, I had something of an advantage in that area.

Turning up the volume on my voice to somewhere about half as high as it could go, I began to extol the virtues of my goods.

A few minutes passed before I got my first proper customer. He tried a small bite of one of the mint cakes from the samples and _oh_ was it worth the wait to see his eyes widen. _There really is something wonderful about seeing a plan start to come together_ , I reflected as I counted out four of the mint cakes and received a penny and two groats in return. I dropped them into my pouch with a smile.

That seemed to be the breaking of the dam and before long I was weighing out bag after bag of the sugar and the mint cakes nearly flying off the shelves. Once or twice, someone tried to steal something, but the large and impressive-looking glaive I kept to hand seemed to dissuade them of the notion. My size might have helped as well.

In the end, I ran out of the mint cakes around midday and the sugar bags by mid-afternoon. I had been selling small quantities at first, but word apparently spread quickly and the last few sales that I made were of entire sacks of sugar. Given that I was selling the granulated stuff by weight, I made no loss.

I ended the day sugar-less, but nearly ten crowns richer - a sum worth about £1000, if I reckoned the approximate values right. More importantly, though, I had the beginnings of a reputation. Reputation that I could leverage to hire some underlings.

One of the downsides of my automata was the fact that - for the moment - they were obviously non-human, meaning that if I wanted to keep that side of my enterprise quiet, I couldn't use them as freely as I otherwise might. Unfortunately that led to the fact that, as I was, I couldn't re-supply midday, nor could I expand my business. Human underlings would hopefully be a solution for that.

I'd need to be careful, of course, but it would make the advancement of my business go far, far easier. It would cut into the earnings, but that was the price you paid for minions. The only issue was finding ones who could be considered something approaching trustworthy. Fortunately, I had a plan.

XxXxXxXxX

I sat in shadow in a corner of my house as I watched the two boys, one in his late teens and one younger by the look of them, sneak through one of the boarded-up sections of the wall and into the closest thing I had to a living room. The dark hair that they shared was roughly cut and they wore clothes a step from threadbare, stained with dust. They were skilled, though. If I couldn't see the heat of their bodies I might have walked right past them. They talked to each other in hushed, vehement whispers. I upped the sensitivity of my hearing.

"Look, he's never here at night. Probably bedding down in one of the whorehouses. We just need to be careful, right? Like we always are."

"I'm just saying that we've been sleeping here for nearly three weeks. We were _lucky_ that we hadn't left our stuff here the first night he turned up. It's been _luck_."

"And we've been _lucky_ for a week so far. Another night won't make a difference."

"There's a house up that way," the younger one pointed northwards, away from the mountain. "We could go there."

"The Redblades' barracks is a stone's throw from there!" whispered the other furiously "They'd think we were stealing from them and string us up, like they did to Brack."

"Well what do you think he'll do if he finds us here?" the other shot back.

"Offer you a job," I broke in, stepping out of the shadows and into the way of the door.

The reaction was immediate. Both boys lunged back, the older pulling a short, unkempt sword from his belt and the younger drawing a knife. Within a heartbeat they were both in a fighting pose, limbs coiled and ready to lash out. I raised my hands in front of me, palms out.

"No need to fight. As I say, I want to offer you a job."

"And what kind of job'll that be?" shot the elder, not lowering his weapon. "Warming your bed?"

"No," I stated firmly. "I would like to employ you as couriers and general help for my stall. Beyond that all I ask is sealed lips when it comes to my business while you're under my employ and that you do your best."

They didn't relax, but the fire in their eyes dimmed a little.

"And what'd you pay us?" asked the elder.

"Two silvers a day apiece with possible rises in the future, based on performance and need; additionally I'd provide a place to sleep and rest. Not-" I nodded my head towards the blankets they'd dropped to the floor in their rush for their weapons "That you haven't been doing that already. You'll have to pay for your food out of your wages." I cracked what I hoped was a welcoming smile and was rewarded by the blades dropping just a little.

"What happens if we don't accept?" the younger one asked.

"I will let you go, and you will leave. I won't let you back in again, though," I warned, not entirely truthfully. It was more than possible that I'd find some other way to help them. This was just the way that benefitted all of us the most. Who knows, if some of my ambitions came to be, they might find themselves in positions of some power. I stepped away from the door. "If you want to leave at some point in the future, the option will remain open."

Their eyes were hard and serious. I'd never seen a child's eyes like that, nor a teenager's. It was quite uncomfortable.

"Can we talk about it?"

"Of course. I would like your answer sooner rather than later, though."

The two boys returned their weapons to their belts and shuffled across the room, where they conversed in low voices. I leaned against the wall, not so much out of fatigue but more from habit. I refrained from listening in to their conversation, even if I could have done. A minute or so later, they returned with an answer.

"We'll take the job, sir."

I kicked off the wall.

"Excellent. Now, only one more thing remains." I held out a hand to each of them. "Any deal should be shaken on, and I believe it's customary to exchange names. Call me Alexander."

A little hesitantly, each of the boys took a hand.

"Heskel."

"Will."

We shook. I smiled.

XxXxXxXxX

A/N: With regards to currency, I'm going to be making it up quite a bit, as the only confirmed transaction I can find in the books was when Brom 'paid' the man at the toll bridge 200 crowns to cross, yet, thirteen coppers was regarded - in Surda - as an acceptable fine for the killing of thirteen chickens. That doesn't really seem to make much sense, so I'm going a bit off the rails here and making up a monetary value system.

For the record, the values are going to be something like this:

Crown ≈£100

Half-crown = 1/2 a crown ≈£50

Silver = 1/4 a half-crown ≈£12.50

Copper = 1/2 a silver ≈ £6

Penny = 1/6 a copper ≈£1

Groat = 1/4 a penny ≈£0.25

Anything above about 100 crowns or so tends to be be dealt with in other objects - jewels, gold ingots, trade of bulk purchases - and anything under a groat is usually either bartered for or just given. A hot meal in a working-class tavern costs maybe four pennies to a copper. Bear in mind that many purchases or transactions are just done on the principle of barter, where it can be gotten away with and especially in smaller, more informal communities. There's far more in the way of illiquid assets and favours than hard cash.

Yenigidi Ketama is something of an exception, as it's basically run by merchants and mercenaries and the former likes to be able to accurately keep track of their assets and the latter likes to be able to purchase things easily without having to drive herds of livestock around. The tribes use coin when dealing with outsiders - traders etc - but among themselves prefer barter.


	21. Chapter 21

The orange light of the torch licked at the walls, sending shadows dancing away into the nether gloom. Straight-hewn stone walls stretched out of our little bubble of light.

Will and Heskel - Heskel was the elder of the two - followed close behind me, the latter holding his own torch.

"Why are we down here?" he asked, his voice holding the same whining tone of every teenager ever. I should know.

"If you're going to work with me, I think it's only fair that you know as much as possible," I answered, not looking back. "Besides, you'd find out soon enough, and I've no desire to lose my little minions quite that quickly."

Why yes, I was channelling Kakashi a little there. Why do you ask?

The two former urchins were quiet, but I could feel their apprehension. It was understandable. I'd only 'employed' them less than an hour before.

I summoned up the map of the underground city in my head and took two right turns and a left before we arrived at the stone doors behind which I could feel the outermost mechanisms of the factory-base.

"The first thing you need to know is that nothing here will hurt you. I can promise that."

They tensed. Understandable. Still, best to get the thing over with. A thought, and the door slid to the side, revealing the room beyond.

Two more of the long pits had been added to the big hall while the computer system and the fabricators had been moved further into the depths, both for safety and because the hall was just so damn convenient for the sugar-making. Arrays of molecular fabricators hung like stalactites from the ceiling over the great troughs, the faint ripples on the surface of the syrupy liquid the only sign of their operation.

Overseeing the operation was my newest creation, the so-called 'Cyclops'. A variant of the Weaver, the Cyclops was intended as more of an overseer and a maintainer than a builder. An issue I had recently discovered was the fact that cores tended to slowly degrade, with the speed of the degradation increasing proportionally to the amount they were used and the amount of power that flowed through them. When the first of the fabricators failed, I was anxious that my own core might fail in a similar way. Thankfully, it seemed that my body was designed to last, as I couldn't find even a trace of such degradation in my main systems, and only minor issues in the auxiliary cores.

In any case, I made the Cyclops to act as a monitor and repair system for the cores and so far it had performed admirably, its stripped-down construction and limited abilities relative to the Weaver making it both cheaper to produce and allowed it to circumvent some of the restrictions on fabricator construction, allowing me to mass-produce it.

I turned to the two former urchins, who both looked a little on the verge of flight. Both of them had drawn their weapons.

"Don't worry," I said, "I created them myself and they're under my control. In short, that," I gestured towards the sugar-troughs "Is where I produce the sweets I'm selling in the market."

"Are they… spirits?" asked Heskel, his face noticeably pale.

"No," I replied. "They're like… um," I wracked my brains for something I could use as an example. "They're machines, like pulley systems on ships, only much, much more complicated. They won't do anything unless I tell them to. I am not a sorcerer. I am an arcanoengineer and yes, before you ask, I am the first as far as I know. That's why you won't have heard of them."

The knives lowered slightly. "So… why did you show us?"

"Because the help I'm after with running my little business - primarily with resupplying the stall - would have meant you meeting the automata anyway, and there was no particular reason _not_ to show you. Provided, of course, that you can be trusted to not go blabbing to all and sundry about it, of course." I levelled what I hoped was a severe glare at the pair.

I immediately regretted that, as it worked a little too well. A chorus of assurances erupted from the pair, until I eventually just put a hand up to interrupt them.

"Look, all I want from you is to pick up the sugar from the house on the surface when the automata deliver it, and to bring it to the stall. If this arrangement goes well, with any luck we'll be heading up in the world and I might even teach you something about how they work. For now, though, shall we just concentrate on the business at hand, eh?"

They nodded, still warily. _Good enough_ , I decided.

XxXxXxXxX

With my new employees, the sugar business expanded quickly. Within a few days I had received several offers to provide snacks for a number of different enterprises, primarily the fighting pits and a few of the more… licentious establishments. I was by no means happy about supporting either business, but in the end practicality won out to an extent.

I negotiated a contract with the owners of two of the larger fighting pits as well as the manager of a large and well-reputed tavern/hostel on the eastern side of town, selling bulk quantities of sugar and mint cakes in return for advertising and a pretty penny. I did not establish a direct contract with any of the brothels - no matter that I could understand why that particular industry had endured for so very long and that some of the prostitutes and courtesans were there by choice, many were undoubtedly not and, frankly, the concept of the thing still rubbed me up the wrong way.

No pun intended.

Regardless, with my spreading fame - and the mystery of my source was likely a factor in that as well - my coffers expanded quickly and within a week of initially setting up the stall I moved my business to a former opium house whose owner had been apparently run off after a batch turned out to be contaminated - more than usual, anyway. I took the large rooms of the interior and turned them into something akin to a lounge, a place where people could come and discuss matters in comfort. I reached out to a few of the wine sellers and managed to form a contract with a merchant, one Awiram Arandas, to supply my new establishment with wine of a reasonable quality.

I also made my next few hires. The third employee of my growing company was a (now former) prostitute by the name of Reene whom Heskel had introduced me to, having apparently met in circumstances they would not tell me and I did not push for.

In any case, Reene quickly demonstrated a sharp mind and a talent for both numbers and charm, both of which qualified her for manning the stall in the market alongside a pair of 'free' mercenaries for protection - free, in this case, meaning that they weren't attached to any preexisting mercenary company. Both men - Tsega and Haile - were large and had a flair for looking intimidating without being scary enough to reduce customers.

I struck up something of a friendship with Reene seeing as she took up residence in one of the rooms on the second storey of the townhouse. I think that at first she thought I was just being nice to her to get into her pants - understandable, given her previous occupation - but as the days wore on, we began to settle into something resembling a comfortable rhythm. She was _scarily_ clever at times and shared an interest with me in the form of the workings of magic, even if she wasn't a magician herself. She never came out and told me directly, but from various clues and references I eventually gathered that she had been taken in as a 'toy child' - a sort of living doll, of sorts - by an Imperial noblewoman who did use magic and had both taught her her letters and made quite an impression on her young mind. There was a painfully bitter not in her voice when she talked about the noblewoman, but given the fact that she had ended up as a prostitute in what is to all intents the ass-end of nowhere I doubted that that particular arrangement had ended well.

Eventually - about two and a half weeks after hiring her - I introduced Reene to the automata. I debated the decision for quite a while and made certain that I was paying her a _very_ handsome wage beforehand, alongside keeping an eye on her with one of the dozens of Muninn I had constructed, but eventually decided that she was more than clever enough to know that something was up anyway. Better to just show her, rather than have her discover them on her own and draw conclusions that i didn't want.

It says something, I think, that after her initial minor freak-out, Reene's first reaction was to inquire about how on earth I managed to provide the energy to animate them. Following my simplified explanation of how I didn't use a living source at all but rather a generator - and after explaining the concept of a generator, for that matter - she brought up a point that I had not considered, and which had immense implications.

Namely, could a magician use the energy in my cores.

Now, she hadn't known about the possibility of storing energy in gems until I referenced it from the books somewhat absentmindedly, and as such she knew no more than I about how exactly that worked. Regardless, if magicians _could_ , the possibilities were both endless and terrifying, and were of enormous importance to my plans to get eventually involved in the political scene of Alagaesia.

Human, and to a lesser extend dwarven, magicians were primarily limited in their capabilities by two things: their knowledge of the Ancient Language and the amount of energy they had at their disposal. If magicians could tap my cores, only the knowledge of the Language would remain an actual limitation, at least to magicians with access to the cores. The possibility of magicians with the capability to perform magic on a level unprecedented except perhaps by the elves was a Big Thing, and would also be a surefire way to draw the attention of a certain megalomaniacal emperor.

I would need to be very careful indeed as to what I did with that particular possibility, if it even was one. I had no desire to be crushed beneath the weight of a thousand-odd Eldunari's worth of magic if I could help it, especially not before I got myself properly set up and dug in.

I made a mental note to looking into finding some way of quietly employing or otherwise obtaining a magician in order to test that hypothesis. Better to know one way or another than to flounder around with no idea. I would need to be careful, though. _Very_ careful.

In any case, the first three weeks of my business were very profitable indeed. Perhaps too much so, as I arrived back at the townhouse one evening to discover a scroll had been sealed to my door.

It was a very nice scroll, high-quality, almost white parchment with two splotches of red wax holding it to the door by a ribbon. It was far from a welcome message, though, given that pressed into one of the seals was the downward-pointing sword of of the Lawgiver, along with the wreath-and-star of the Council of Seven, the closest thing the mercenaries and merchants of the city had to a ruling body. With trepidation, I pulled the scroll from its place and slipped it out of its ribbon, unfurling it.

 _ **By the generous request of the Lawgiver and the Council of Seven, you are cordially invited to partake of an evening meal with the aforementioned parties two days hence in the Hall of the Lawgiver.**_

 _ **You are permitted to bring one member of your Company with you, and are also requested to provide a selection of your Company's products for the meal. Present this letter to the guards at the gate and they will allow you passage.**_

 _ **Penned this day by the Scribe Eil on behalf of the aforementioned Lawgiver and Council**_

Well…

That's certainly something.


	22. Chapter 22

As I approached the gates of the Lawgiver's hall - one of very few buildings in the half-ruined city that could truthfully be called both impressive and complete - I felt a nervous anticipation build within me.

The sweetmeats had been taken earlier by a contingent of guards and functionaries who had arrived at the company's main outlet earlier that day. A small smile twisted my lips as I remembered the game Will and Heskel had made out of proposing ever-more outlandish ideas for sweets and confectionary for the dinner. They had eventually dragged Reene and I into their game, eventually culminating in a sugar rose the size of a dinner plate and coloured a delicate pink by the cochineal dye Will had run out to the market to buy. It was a magnificent construction of tooth-rotting opulence, made all the more so by the fact that it had been fabricated in such a way that each petal could be separately removed from the whole and eaten like a sugary wafer.

It had been almost sad to place the silver food-cloche over the thing and place it on the functionaries' cart, accompanied with _strict_ instructions to not, under any circumstances, handle it roughly. It was quite a sight to see Reene making full use of her impressive presence to back that up.

The former courtesan accompanied me up the approach to the Lawgiver's hall, dressed in the finest garment that could be found on short notice. It was like something between a ballroom dress and a kimono, long and robelike with great panels of rich blue cloth. It was fortunate that the dinner was in the late evening, as I doubted anyone could last more than a few minutes in that kind of dress during the heat of the day. Reene wore it with a practiced elegance, stepping just so as to keep the hem from touching the well-paved road.

I wore a breastplate that I had had the fabricators produce more for aesthetics than for practicality, a construction of bands of criss-crossing steel edged with gold, based on what I remembered of the elves' armour from _Lord of the Rings_. Beneath that I wore a pair of well-cut trousers and over it a short crimson-red velvet shoulder-cape, held at the shoulder by a silver pin.

All in all, we looked quite the pair as we reached the gate. Four guards lined the portal at ground level, while a further two manned the small watchtowers on either side. They tensed a little as we approached, before relaxing when I brought out the letter we had been given. I passed it into the outstretched hand and waited a moment as he peered at it. Then he passed it back and called something up to the men in the watchtowers in the language of the tribes.

I really needed to find the time to learn the tribes' language properly. Reene knew it, which was one of the major reasons she was with me: to act as an interpreter if necessary.

In answer the men in the towers each pulled on a rope, allowing the gates to open partly. _A bar on the inside_ , I guessed, and was proven right when we stepped through into the grounds of the hall.

In truth, calling the building ahead of us a hall would be both doing it an injustice and an untruth. It was more like a castle had decided to have a three-way with a palace and a mosque and the result had been plopped on a low mound that was too square to be natural. A pillared entrance faced us as we were escorted through the verdant grounds that stretched between it and the low curtain wall that we had just passed through.

We were swiftly ushered inside the building. The circular entrance hall managed the trick of appearing both artful and opulent. Paper strips perhaps six inches wide hung from the domed ceiling, delicate symbols intertwining with inked scenes rendered in exquisite detail entwining along their length. Careful placement of furniture around incense braziers and small tables completed the image, lending the whole space an air of refinement and wealth that had no need to show itself off.

We were directed through the first room and along a short corridor into a second. This room was quite clearly a room for meals and business dealings, silk and velvet sitting-cushions set on the floor around a low, circular table. The wood was red and darkly varnished. It reminded me of mahogany.

"Please, take your places," asked our guide, a young, dark-skinned man in a robe who had met us at the doors. "The Lawgiver and the Council will be here soon. They regret that they are not able to be here to welcome you, but they are currently engaged in arbitrating a dispute between the Redblades and Butcher's Bill companies. They hope that you will not take offense."

 _So that's the game_ , I thought. A power play, and a blatant one at that. Unless they really were held back… That was why I brought Reene with me. She was better at the subtleties.

Unsure, I nodded in a way that I hoped communicated my acceptance. The guide seemed to take it as such, as he quickly dismissed himself, leaving from the same door we had come in. Reene settled herself down on one of the cushions and I followed suit, sinking down beside her.

We talked quietly for several minutes until finally we were interrupted by the opening of the door once again. The guide had returned, this time with company. He stepped back smartly from the door, allowing us to see the man behind.

He was large, tall and thickset. He wore a breastplate emblazoned with the image of a pair of scales, and a red cloak. His arms were bare, displaying the bulk of muscle that was built there, the same bulk I had come to associate with the mercenaries that roamed the trading city. I noticed that his facial features were more similar to caucasian than the pseudo-middle eastern of most of the population of the city. He directed a curious glance at me, his eyes flickering over my armour.

Behind him came a small procession of men, none of them with the same muscular bulk. They dressed in long, colourful robes and on three I recognised the embroidered bands that signified a member of the tribes, although I couldn't tell which came from what tribe. All of them shared a few attributes, though, obvious wealth and status foremost among them. Each wore a heavy medallion, a wreath surrounding a star.

One by one they took seats around the table. Several minutes were spent in pleasantries and introductions, polite smiles exchanged alongside names, titles and company specialties. I learned that the business of Arame - a shorter, dark-haired man with a vivacious smile that didn't quit disguise the greed in his eyes - was in 'friendly' competition with that of Uriah, a taller, thinner man with bald pate, along with a dozen other such rivalries and alliances. All in all, I was unreasonably grateful when the door opened once more to admit a small army of cooks and attendants, each carrying a different dish.

Now, you may be wondering why I wasn't somewhat apprehensive at the thought of having to eat, what with the whole robot-thing and all. Fortunately, I had thought ahead and made use of a fabricator to alter my body - the first real alteration I'd made to it. In short, I had moved a few of my workings around in order to create an internal space to store whatever I ate, along with a small fabricator in order to reconfigure the food into a more compact form. So long as I was careful about how quickly I ate, I'd be fine.

It was just a pity that I didn't really have a sense of taste. The food looked delicious.

I mean, I could tell with little more than a glance the chemical components of the food, down to a detail that the human tongue wouldn't be able to match in a million years, but it wasn't the same. Not at all. Like the difference between a Monet and a dry, descriptive report on the same painting.

On the bright side, that left me more-or-less free to concentrate on what was being said.

And what a conversation it was.

It seemed the initial pleasantries, for all their veiled viciousness, had been but the opening skirmishes of a war of words, all conducted with polite smiles and boisterous laughter, helped along by the watered wine that filled the cups at the table. The Lawgiver remained somewhat aloof, but even he traded the occasional barbed word with this or that councilmember. In fact, it seemed almost as though Reene and I were near-forgotten, at least until the desserts came around.

It began with the unveiling of the six trays of sweetmeats that we had provided, alongside the famous sugar rose. Arame picked up one of the smaller treats, a green-and-red-striped cube that was my attempt at something like a turkish delight (emphasis on _was_ , as I had no idea how to make a turkish delight and ended up with essentially a multicoloured sugarcube with some flavouring added as an afterthought) and plopped it in his mouth.

"Mmm. Marvellous," he said, chewing as he did so. "You _must_ tell us where you learned to make such delights."

"Family secret," I replied, returning a smile that only hid my irritation with the situation by virtue of the disconnect between my mind and body. "I'm quite certain that my mother would come back and haunt me if I gave out her secret."

That elicited a seemingly good-natured laugh from the table, although it wasn't entirely genuine.

"Ah, but we can't live in fear of ghosts, now can we?" interjected another of the councilmen, a corpulent man by the name of Aru. "After all, if we did that we'd never have come and settled here, would we?

"In any case, what I want to know is where you've been keeping all the hives for the honey. Unless you've got an elf on the payroll - gods know they've got the magic to do just about anything - you must have whole swarms of them around somewhere."

"Ah, but don't you find bees so very irritating, buzzing all over the place? So I thought, what if one could do away with them entirely. As I've said, the sweets were something of a family specialty and I knew enough of natural philosophy to make a few leaps of my own. In the end, I came up with another way."

"I wonder if I wasn't rather close with the elf idea," replied Aru, his voice flatter and less personable than before. "I don't suppose you're a magician yourself, are you?"

I plastered on a self-deprecating smile.

"No, no, not a spark of magic in me, I'm afraid." A lie. A horrible, horrible lie. "Just a bit of brains and the willingness to use them."

"Both excellent traits and ones which will carry you far, if the gods are good," the Lawgiver looked like he might have said something else, but a young runner dashed in and whispered something in his ear. He nodded and waved the boy away. "In any case, though, I think that I must take my leave."

He stood and left and the others evidently took that as the cue to wander out of the dining room and into the grounds, taking a number of the dishes with them. Reene and I followed behind at a waved invitation, out through a previously concealed side-door and out into the starlit night.


	23. Chapter 23

"Walk with me."

The request came as something of a surprise, coming as it did after I thought I'd found something of a refuge from the council's politicking. I'd never been so good at the whole social thing, being more interested in books when I was younger, and rarely spent a lot of time with others outside of close friends. I'd thought I'd made good my 'escape' by loitering by one of the low stone pillars that littered the gardens, this one serving as a table for the sugar rose, now rather reduced.

The speaker was Aru, who warded off the night's chill with a heavy outer robe that had been supplied by one of his entourage. With no reason to deny him, I nodded and stepped away from the table, snagging one of the petals for appearance's sake. My 'stomach' was still only about half-full.

"I'm sorry if I offended earlier, with what I said about magicians and such," he began. "I meant only to joke. Unfortunately, my sense of humour is sometimes not appreciated so well by those around me."

I waved the apology away. "No harm done."

"Good, good. Still, what you've managed in such a short time is quite impressive. Especially given your" and he gave me a significant look "background. A mercenary must know his way around coin of course but what you've built requires a certain ambition on top of that, not to mention a good helping of luck. Heavens know I'd never have made it here without the gods' favour. Not sure how I got it though."

He chuckled to himself.

"In any case, though, you've got a good thing going with your sugar-business. I won't ask where you get the stuff - for all I know you might actually be magic - but you have the potential to go far with it." His eyes sharpened, a glint of something else entering them. "That said, no-one can face the world alone. I'd be more than happy to help out an up-and-coming businessman like yourself. Send a letter or a runner if you ever want some help or advice."

Ah. So that was his game. Still, I couldn't very well just bluntly refuse. I smiled.

"Thank you for the offer. I'll take you up on it if I need to."

He returned my smile with a grin of his own before pausing and reaching up to my shoulder.

"Look. Everyone here's looking out for themselves. I am, you are, your friend is" he motioned towards Reene, who was conversing with one of the female merchants. "Everyone does. That's not to say that interests can't align. Best way to do well's to work for yourself and others at the same time. You've got something going and I'd be a fool not to want to get in on it. I've got a position here. So why don't we help each other out, eh?"

XxXxXxXxX

The 'meeting' broke up soon after that. There was a couple of other, similar offers, each as charitable as the next, but I managed to deflect, thank and accept well enough. It was still late, really late, though, when Reene and I made our final goodbyes and left the grounds to return to the townhouse.

It was fully repaired now, perhaps even looking like it did in its prime. Judicious application of bullshit magitech fabricators can get you a long way, it seems. There were no lights at the windows and, more tellingly, no sounds audible from outside, so it was likely that Will and Heskel were asleep. Or out in the red silk quarter, in Heskel's case. He had a fondness for that sort of thing, now that he had the coin for it. I didn't particularly approve, but teenagers will be teenagers, I supposed. As long as he didn't catch some kind of STD. There wasn't much I could do about that, short of fabricating a set of condoms.

I paused. _Huh. Did I really just think that? Something must be wrong with me._

"What is it?"

Reene had evidently noticed my stop, sending a questioning look my way. I shook my head, chuckling lightly.

"Nothing. Just an odd thought, is all."

She seemed to accept that and opened the door, stepping inside. I followed, stepping past her and into the living room-area, stripping off my cloak as I went. Nevermind that I didn't really tire and could easily deal with the weight, it was an irritating garment to wear.

While Reene fiddled with her dress, taking off the outermost layer - there were three - I went over to the wine rack in the corner, taking down one of the bottles which she had made use of her salary to purchase and set it on the low table, before going to fetch a cup for it. I had no use for alcohol but Reene had a fondness for wine when she could get a hold of it. Also, she looked a little frazzled after the dinner and she had done a marvellous job of deflecting as much of the questioning from me as possible. I would have to do something to thank her properly.

I unbuckled the breastplate and set it down by the side of a seat before sinking down myself. Even if I didn't get tired anymore, it still felt good, somehow, to just sit down. _Perhaps it's a bit like phantom limb syndrome_ , I mused. _Phantom exhaustion syndrome? Lingering tiredness disorder?_

Presently, the dark-haired woman joined me in the sitting room, pouring an inch or so of the wine for herself.

"You won't have any?"

I shook my head, smiling. It was almost a ritual by now. I remembered the first time I had said that I didn't partake of alcohol if I could help it. She'd looked at me like I'd grown a second head and I had been worried that I'd committed some kind of faux pas until she threw back her head and laughed like the cheesiest of witches.

"You don't know what you're missing," she said, as she always did. "Gods know we deserve it after dealing with those blowhards. Did you see Iosara?" I had. She was one of the female councilors, a woman with eyes like chips of flint and a chin just as sharp. "She was strutting around like she owned the whole damned place."

"They certainly weren't the easiest of company," I replied.

"Too true." She took another sip. "Enough waffling, though. What do you think we need to do? I have my own suggestions, but I'll save those until you've said your piece."

"Well, first things first we need to back up what we said about our sources with something that can at least appear to be real. Perhaps we could get a hold of some plant from the eastern traders, something we can grow underground?"

"Maybe. Might be tricky to find something that looks believable, though. Not to mention grows fast enough."

I hummed an agreement. "Also, Aru - the fatter one - offered me his support 'if I ever need some help or advice'." I made the air quotes abundantly clear.

"Hmm. Unsubtle. Then again, I've heard that Aru isn't especially one for beating about the bush."

"Well, in any case I don't think we can really just ignore them, not now that they've gone and reached out to us. So. What do we do? Big-picture wise, I mean."

She looked at me a little oddly. "Big picture? I don't think I'm familiar with that expression."

"Ah, sorry. In the long term."

She brought her cup up to her chin and swirled it, a frown furrowing her face.

"As I see it, we have two major options, if we want to stay here. We remain a neutral party, or we directly ally with one or the other. Remaining neutral leaves us without direct protection - barring the automata, of course - until we can buy it ourselves. Allying ourselves would give us that protection, but would also embroil us in their rivalries and endebt us."

We lapsed into silence for several seconds, both thinking. Finally, I broke the silence.

"How long do you think we would have until we would be pushed, one way or another?"

Another thoughtful sip.

"I doubt any of the councilors will move immediately. Messages, offers of aid are more likely in the next few weeks. If we do not declare one way or another in the next month, perhaps they will begin to make more forceful overtures. That is assuming, of course, that we don't do anything to upset the situation and there's no external changes either. In any case, we have time yet."

"So. We have maybe a month or so to to get ourselves to a properly secure position?"

Wordlessly, Reene nodded.

"In that case, we'll have to get to work."

"Indeed." She raised her cup. "To profit, then."

I smiled, raising an invisible drink of my own. She answered with a smile of her own, before pausing before the cup reached her lips.

"Have you told any others of your creations?"

I blinked - or at least I looked like I blinked. "Other than you, the only ones who know are Will and Heskel, and I impressed on them that they were not to tell or even to hint at them."

"That's what I thought. One of them must have talked to someone though."

"Why?" I was getting really quite worried. I did intend to reveal my technology eventually, but not until I'd gotten a good, solid base to work from.

"After we went outside, I returned to the dining room to fetch a glass. When I entered, there was a woman standing there. She had curly brown hair and a mousy sort of face. I would have thought her a servant, only as soon as I entered she walked right up to me and said 'Tell your friend out there that I'll be watching what he's doing with interest. I'd like to know where he got those metal bugs of his.' Then she grinned, turned on her heel and sauntered out the door."

I felt cold inside, and it wasn't the remains of the meal from earlier. How the heck had someone else found out about the automata? Well, the obvious answer was that Will or Heskel had talked - probably Heskel, if I had to put money on it, what with his habit of frequenting the whorehouses. Maybe they'd found the base in the catacombs. I'd installed 'security cameras' based on the scanners of the Muninn, though, so they ought to have been spotted.

It was an uncomfortable position to be in, not knowing what the hell was going on.

"We'll have to be on the look-out, then," I said "And I'll have a word with the boys in the morning. We need to get to the bottom of this."


	24. Chapter 24

As it turned out, it wasn't quite that easy. We couldn't very well just pop into the Lawgiver's palace and go asking around if the servants had seen anyone who matched our description. Surveillance drones were a possibility, but that would run the risk of discovery and had a good chance that it wouldn't actually turn up anything useful. Bribery was considered as an option, but then discarded. That would open up the risk of whoever we bribed taking our money and then selling the knowledge of our interest to someone else and we were far from the most wealthy entity in the area.

In the end, we decided that the best course of action would be to keep an eye out and to concentrate on preparing for whatever confrontation would inevitably come our way, and the first step in that direction was to ensure that the company appeared both prosperous and unassailable.

Reene and I split that particular task between us, where she took on the task of increasing our profits as much as possible and I worked on securing us. There were a number of different types of potential attack which had to be defended against.

The first, and most obvious, was a physical one. Few would pay attention to a 'drunk' act of arson, more out of familiarity than actual belief that nothing was going on. Minor attacks of that sort happened nearly every week. It reminded me of gang war news reports back on Earth.

Defending against such aggression usually required a permanent protective force. In the case of Yenigidi Ketama, that typically meant mercenaries of one stripe or another. However, I had another option, and one I wanted to try out before we went and hired one of the companies.

In short, I had the capability to build killbots, and I was going to make use of that capability.

All of the automata that I had built so far had been riffs off of old designs, just with bits taken off, added on or with new programming courtesy of my OS' delightfully intuitive programming system. It kind of reminded me of when i had gotten a set of LEGO Mindstorms when I was about 11. It had come with a program which I had installed on the family's ancient Acer which used drag-and-drop programming, where you'd place certain behaviours in a grid and link them up to other ones. Like "Look for X. If X is present, do Y. If X is not present, look again" and so on. The programming system I was working with for the automata was vaguely similar in concept, only taken to a vastly greater level of complexity. The fact that I was essentially running the program in my mind and so could make edits on a whim made it even better.

And so began the so-called Iron Legion project.

Ah, the joys of being somewhere where no-one gets your references and copyright doesn't exist~

In any case, I began by taking the design of my own body and stripping away everything but the skeleton and essential systems: proprioception, muscle stimulators, capacitors and the central mind-core. The core I left mostly blank only putting in the basics of motor control and the programs needed to keep the thing upright and basically functional. I'd fill in the rest later.

 _Now, what do we need in a warrior-automaton?_

Well, a weapon came to mind first of all, followed by protection and strength. Senses would be a good idea, too. Coordination and technique might be tricky. I remembered back on Earth, they used special markers on bodysuits to record physical movement for animation and stuff, so as to get the movements right in animated films or for CGI. _Maybe I could do something similar, having one or two of the Muninn spy on various mercenary companies' training grounds, recording their movements?_ I thought.

As for translating those readings into actual 'technique', that's where the computer I'd built in the Foundry would come in.

Unfortunately, it turned out that even for a supercomputer, trawling through the equivalent of petabytes of data and reconstructing it from a corrupted mush is slow going. It had made useful progress, certainly - large parts of my understanding of the programming system for the automatons came from the equivalent of a user's manual that had been restored - but I was still frustratingly far from deciphering much of it.

Besides de-corrupting the pilfered files there was something else I had used it for since building it; namely, using it to compile and organise the data the Muninn had collected about the city, its occupants, their allegiances and the surrounding areas. I had maps both physical and demographic (in virtual 3D), mind-maps of who dealt with who with what, records of which mercenary group had what prices, anything you cared to name, I had it.

Cores excelled in that sort of thing. It was one of the greatest differences I'd noticed compared to Earth-computers. Cores had the capability to understand abstract things like allegiance and such in terms other than just who spent more than X amount of time with a group. I had a theory that the cores somehow tapped into my own schemas and used those for judgements. It was quite incredible, really, and it was exactly that capability that I intended to tap into for the construction of fighting styles.

Understanding of abstract concepts + supercomputer's processing power * goal of effective fighting style = damn effective fighting style.

Elementary.

Which left me to refine the actual body. An appearance of humanity would be essential, but I wasn't sure how far that should stretch. Should I try to work out some way to mimic human flesh, or just encase them in armour? It took me several hours to decide, during which I played around with a number of ideas, but in the end I opted for the former. I had the time, and my experimentations had given me an inkling of how to do so anyway.

I began with taking one of the kinetic cores which powered my movements. Then, I downsized it as much as physically possible while still retaining a smidgen of power capacity and the ability to project a controllable kinetic field to allow it to adhere to things touching it, and to localise the adhesion. Lastly, I added an ability for each 'cell' to very slightly alter its outward shape, allowing it to alter the way it refracted light and, thus, its colour. It ended up about 150 μm* in diameter, about half again as large as a plant cell. More than small enough. That would give me the basic substance of the Legion's pseudo-flesh. However, as it was, all I had was a potential mass of nanomachines capable of sticking themselves together. Useful, but without something to oversee and coordinate them properly I'd be forced to do it all myself, an impossible feat for more than about 30 of the core-cells.

The next core I began to construct was based off of the generic 'virtual intelligence' core that handled the coordination of the Weaver's limbs. I began, once again, with downsizing it as much as possible while keeping the bare minimum of processing power required to control a mass of core-cells about equal to what you could hold in two cupped hands. On top of that, it could also make use of the information of the core-cells relative positions to simulate a sense of touch and hearing. A specialised variant was also constructed which could monitor light impacting on the core-cells, simulating sight.

Finally, I took the same design as for the micro-administrators and upsized it, creating a third core to coordinate large areas of the 'body', a leg, an arm and so on. I fed the volumetric data into the computer and within seconds it had calculated the best placement for each of the cores, an analogue to a nervous system.

Returning to the skeletal design I had before, I stripped out the muscle-simulator cores and overlaid the 'nervous system' onto the design, building out 'fixtures' from the skeleton to hold the cores. A moment's thought later, I added wire like imitations of tendons, so as to hold the skeletons together a little better, and to prevent the whole thing from falling apart if it ran out of power.

Speaking of which, I ran a simulation of the power costs. Yeeesh. Much too high to be acceptable as it was.

The power consumption was far too great and eventually I was forced to reduce the amount of cell-cores to just enough for a 'skin' about half a centimetre thick, restoring the muscle-stimulators and the rest of the paraphernalia. It was enough for a human appearance and for adaptive armour, but nothing more. My dreams of protean soldiers in the vein of the T-1000 remained exactly that. A pity, but I guess there was probably a reason that the creators of the automata didn't do that in the first place. The power requirements were still less than ideal, only allowing continuous non-strenuous operation for about six hours and much less from that in battle situations, less than about 45 minutes. However, for the moment that would be more than enough, given that most of the time they'd be standing around on guard, and could recharge fairly easily. Disguising one Legionnaire as another while one went off to recharge would be simplicity itself.

It took me more than a week to finalise the design, and by then it was far and away the most complex automaton I'd made. Each Legionnaire took almost a day to construct fully.

It was only when the first skeleton was laid down in the vat of semisolid cell-cores and the vaguely gooey-looking substance flowed up and formed onto the Terminator-esque skeleton that I realised something.

My mind, as far as I knew, was housed in my central core. Could it maybe be possible to transfer myself, my consciousness, into one of the Iron Legionnaires?

In the end, I decided not to chance it, not yet at least. For one, I had no idea if I'd be able to personally 'work' a body like that, and for another I didn't know what would happen to me if my core was disconnected. Would I just vanish? More practically, that kind of short operation time would be a pain in the proverbial arse.

No, I'd just have to manage as I was for the time being. Transhumanism - transrobotism? - could wait.

XxXxXxXxX

*Micrometres


	25. Chapter 25

While I was working on my little 'project', Reene was just as busy with the company.

Our growth was quick and, by business standards, meteoric, especially after the first few Legionnaires were 'hired' and began their duties, standing impassive guard over our holdings. There had been a couple of 'probings' by other companies - 'drunken' brawls, that sort of thing - but the Legionnaires handled them as efficiently as I had hoped. It had only taken a couple of incidents to prove that, yes, our sentinels were as professional as they looked.

It was just a pity that I had to deflect the questions from the merchants of the Council as to their origins at the periodic dinners we had at various residences in and around the city.

Those were inevitably an unpleasant mix of tediousness and necessary paranoia, as Reene and I negotiated our way around contracts with various groups for shipping our sugar elsewhere - I'd made a note to expand into shipping myself when I could - all the while doing our best to reveal as little as possible. I'd even had to fend off a - thankfully subtle - inquiry as to my marital status, while all the while the merchant's second-born daughter - a girl with curly, dark hair and vaguely Italian looks - made eyes at me over the table. It was most disconcerting, not to mention disturbing.

We managed, though, and within a month our income had more than tripled compared to what it had been before the initial 'audience' with the Council and the Lawgiver. Of course, in order to get that kind of turnout, we had needed to expand, and expansion meant hiring.

That had been an affair in and of itself.

We didn't need _that_ many staff, no more than a couple dozen, but even that was dangerous for us. As the saying went, three people could keep a secret if two of them were dead, and the wider the circle of conspiracy the greater the chance of a traitor. The fact that it would be comparatively easy to bribe anyone we hired to reveal what we didn't want to be was just icing on the proverbial cake.

There was little we could do to hide where our goods came from, not if we wanted to actually have useful employees. I could, conceivably, make use of a variant of the Legionnaires to serve instead, but they were nod good for looking 'friendly', as a server or stallholder would have to in order to get the best sales. Apparently there was something unnerving, something just a little 'other', about the Legionnaires, despite the fact that they looked and acted human down to the smallest detail I could tell.

I had no idea what. Maybe it was something to do with Alagaesia's inherently magical nature? Perhaps people here had an inherent ability to subconsciously sense something which wasn't 'ensouled' or whatever? I didn't seem to have the same issues, so I was mystified.

In any case, the solution to our problem was eventually devised by Will.

Reene and I were debating the issue late at night when the younger boy had poked his head into the room, having clearly been listening at the door, and suggested that we let them take the bribes, but pay them ourselves to give false information.

It was simple, and such a stupidly easy solution that I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it before. If people wanted to be corrupt, we could take advantage of that. It still left the problem of mind-readers, of course, but there weren't any magicians in the city that we knew of, barring the tribes' shamans, and I hadn't the faintest clue what to do about that anyways.

Still, it required that we put some more infrastructure in place beforehand. If one of my people - and what a strange thought that is - was asked to show someone something, I'd have to provide something to show.

So I did.

In the end, a factory-scale rendition of a mad scientist's laboratory was set up in an empty hall in the under-city. Vessels and tubes of glass bubbled with many-coloured liquids, feeding tinto great stone vats in the floor which were heated from beneath by great firepits. There was even a pair of donkeys we had purchased - promptly christened Eeyore and Dave by me, much to the confusion of my friends - which took turns moving a mechanical section, large wooden cogs and axles setting centrifuges spinning..

Of course, the whole thing was bogus, a pretty show ending in the evaporation of the water from a water-and-glucose solution to act as the 'source' for our sugar. I had a chuckle to myself about the thought of one of the other merchants trying to set up the same apparatus.

It looked damn impressive, though, and in the end that was what it was meant to do. The 'product' at the end of it was just the icing on the proverbial cake, intended to dissuade any who wanted to test to make sure that it wasn't the hoax it was.

Ah, but the mind can get twisty when you can make pretty much anything you can imagine~

In any case, the recruiting spree which followed was both mentally exhausting and immensely satisfying when it was over with. It had been agreed that interviewing all applicatns personally would be the best idea. I had added that we should do it in the 'sugar parlour', after hours.

I didn't anticipate how tiring the whole affair would be.

In all, it took nearly one and a half weeks to get up to a full complement - thirteen new employees, mostly there to help out with various deliveries, but also to man our stalls.

We had two regular stalls, now, one in the big open market and the other in the smaller, calmer market that the higher classes tend to frequent, the one where all the stalls sell jewels and silks. It was quite a coup to be allowed to set up a stall there. Of course, there was the 'parlour' as well, but all that really needed was a couple new 'attendants' to take the pressure off of Reene and I.

The part that took the longest was bringing the hires up to speed with some of the workings of our company. We were circumspect about what we revealed, though. Most of them thought that the mock-up was the source of our produce, and only a select few - the ones who needed to know - knew that that was but a misdirection.

We'd modified the plan during the recruiting process, removing as many moving parts as we could. They couldn't reveal what they didn't know, after all, and again, the wider the circle of conspiracy and all that.

In all honesty, the secrecy was beginning to wear on me, but it certainly paid off.

The extra hands made dealing with what we had set up already immeasurably easier, allowing Reene and I to concentrate on the bigger picture. Once again, she handled the day-to-day more than I did, and I worked on the long-term stuff. In the more-than-month since I'd - _some-fucking-how -_ found myself in Alagaesia, I'd had a lot of time to think on what I wanted to do, and how to go about it.

Turns out that you end up with an excess of time when you don't have to sleep. Who knew?

Unfortunately, 'a lot of time to think' doesn't necessarily equate to 'a useful decision'. There were just too many factors, too many hing sin play, and I kept going back and re-thinking stuff. I'd always been indecisive, and the fact that this was likely a good deal more important than deciding which university to go to didn't lessen the stress any.

My main problem was that I really wasn't sure how far I should go. On one hand, Galbatorix was certainly a megalomaniac, almost certainly had some kind of sociopathy or psychopathy and was close to discovering the Name of Names, which would essentially allow him to mess with the very nature of magic itself. That sounded to me like a disaster waiting to happen _at the very best_. Worse, perhaps, he already had access to hundreds, if not thousands of Eldunari, all of which he could draw on for bullshit-tier magic.

On the other hand, from an objective point of view, Galbatorix was far from the worst ruler one could ask for. Sure, he didn't particularly care for individuals, but he did do a more-than-acceptable job of running the Broddring Empire. Better than a number of the rulers of the former kingdom in the couple of histories that I had managed to get my hands on. Plus, I was honestly scared of him. Like _I-would-shit-my-pants-if-I-was-physically-capable-of-that_ scared at the thought of actually _fighting_ that monster. He was barely a step down from a physical _god_ , after all. Why wouldn't I be? PLus, je had about 90 years of experience on me, even if I could probably come up with some kind of weapon or something which could wipe him out quickly enough that he couldn't figure it out - high-powered lasers spring to mind.

Still, once I'd decided that yes, I _was_ going to do my best to take down the magical emperor-demigod, that still left a host of other questions. How would I do it? Who would I ally with? Who _could_ I ally with? Should I go talk to the Elves? Should I offer help to the Varden or Surda?

I didn't really have the option of just building my own killbot army, as I'd made the unfortunate discovery with the Legionnaires that I had a sort of 'soft ceiling' on the number of complex automata I could create. Something comparatively simple like the Muninn took nearly nothing to make, but I could probably only maintain maybe 50 or so full Legionnaires. I was pretty sure it wasn't an artificial limit, either. I hypothesised that it was to do with each automaton making use of part of my 'subconsciousness' in order to be able to react to new stimuli - I tested with making a few Ants and hard-programming in very definite strictures to follow, and those took maybe half as much of my 'resources' as the normal one - but I wasn't entirely sure. I could build as many 'dumb' things as I liked, it was only the 'smart' ones that had the limit. I was pretty sure that was how the Binah did its 'abstract concepts' thing, too.

In the beginning, I'd started up the company with a vague idea of being able to maybe piggyback automaton spies on a trading network, along with the desire to just _do_ something instead of just reacting. Now, though, I made the decision to really work at it. To build it into a power which could be _recognised_ , enough so that I could act as something like an ally of one of the Powers That Be, as opposed to just a subordinate organisation of some kind.

The automata would help with that, of course, when they were revealed, as would the technology I could bring to bear. The possibility of being able to power up magicians via artificially-filled gems would be _massive_ as well, if it worked. However, if we wanted to be recognised as something more than that, we needed to diversify our business, so that's what we did.

Over the two and a half months following the creation of the Legionnaires, we expanded our business into dealing not only in sugar and sugary products but a half-dozen other things as well. Jewellery, silks, foodstuffs in general. We even made a deal with one of the tribes that dealt primarily in livestock – the Gurama had long since left, although they had sent a message to say that they would be back within the year.

We were doing well. Exceptionally well, in fact.

It was a good time.


	26. Chapter 26

While business was good for us, the greater city fared less well. The markets still bustled and the traders still came, but there were whisperings of unease. It began with one of the bigger companies (although not one with a seat on the Council) trying to hire the Bloodied Blades company as permanent 'assets', so they could keep them on retainer.

Now, that sort of thing was more than common. It was what kept a dozen-odd full companies of mercenaries in and around the city, after all, and from at each other's' throats (mostly) or from engaging in banditry (again, mostly). The problem here was that not only did the Blades take the contract – although they certainly led their prospective employers around by the nose for a little under a month – but one of their members (no-one was ever sure quite who) let slip that they were hired more as 'sanctioned' bandits than as a protective detail.

That was far less acceptable.

It was a basic part of the semi-written rules that kept the Lawgiver's Council together: "We don't (publicly) fuck with each other." One of the member companies breaking that was grounds for escalation, and for a few weeks there was a flurry of renegotiations, viciously polite dinners and an uncommon number of burning buildings.

Things got more and more chaotic and eventually the whole thing came to a head, as it eventually had to.

XxXxXxXxX

I was at a dinner with the Council and the Lawgiver, along with a small collection of lesser merchants like myself, when things went to shit.

It was fairly typical for that type of meal. Political and business rivalries, inflamed by the city's unrest, were especially vicious that night. Barbs flew back and forth across the table, interspersed by careful compliments and sips of wine.

I had come alone this time, as Reene had had no invitation, and was wishing desperately to be somewhere – anywhere – but there. I was bad enough at dealing with people normally, when they were at least _trying_ to be civil. When they were actively being as vicious as they could? Let me out, please.

Still, apparently some of their social-fu skill had rubbed off on me – or at least Reene's lessons had helped out – and I could at least keep up with the alliances and rivalries around the table. I even contributed some, doing my best to act as as much of a peacemaker as I could. Of course, I did have something of an advantage in that I had a near-infallible memory, but I liked to believe that at least some of my success was due to skill rather than 'natural' talent.

It was about an hour and a half into the dinner and a group of servants was just removing the remains of the third course when a man, no more than maybe twenty, rushed into the room.

"Fire! The western wing is aflame!"

A moment of silence fell, then a babble of cacophonous voices rose, every person in the room endeavouring to flee as swiftly as possible. No-one got very far, though. In the confusion following the runner's declaration, a dozen of the serving staff dropped their platters to the floor, pulled long, thin knives from previously hidden sheathes and fell upon the guests.

My mind sharpened to an edge of jagged glass.

 _Fourteen hostiles. Short-ranged weapons, designed for stabbing. Intended to take advantage of minimal protections. Minimal threat to self. Focus on protection of allies._

I stepped forwards sharply, entering the space of the closest of the would-be assassins and caught him with a set of curled knuckles to the chest. There was a faint cracking sound and he fell, wheezing. _Neutralised_.

I turned to the face the next nearest, but a tortured scream diverted my attention. I swivelled my head, to be greeted with the sight of an assassin with a dagger sunk hilt-deep into the arm of one of the merchants. It was far from a mortal blow, but even from where I stood I could see the unnatural bulging of the victim's veins and the sudden ruddy tint to his features. He fell, and the knife glowed a dull red beneath the steaming blood at it slipped from his arm.

 _Enchanted weapons. Dangerous. Heat-based._ _Effect propagates through the body from point of contact._

In the moment I took to process the new information, another of the merchants fell, this one a member of the council. Another had noticed his comrade's defeat and had turned to face me, his knife shimmering oddly in his grasp. His face was plain, average. I could have walked past him in the markets a dozen times.

He spoke. I ignored it, the audio pushed to the back of my mind. Irrelevant. He stepped forwards, bringing the dagger in a sweep intended to slip beneath the armpit of my armour.

He was fast, impressively so. I turned, allowing the knife to graze along the surface of the armour and intending to bring my own arm up to catch his and disarm him. Instead, the metal glowed hot, turning syrupy and allowing the blade through. It was halted by the more advanced alloys of my chest, but not before the disruption of its strike caused Ulukarana's illusion to fade and dissipate.

The assassin's face paled and his eyes widened. His mouth fell open a fraction before firming in an expression of determination.

My cover was blown, irrevocably. I had no reason to hold back on my other abilities now.

The gem in my palm gleamed and the assassin's knife returned to normality, the faint haze of heat vanishing as I consumed the heat as fast as it could be generated. I let fly with a flurry of metallic fists, crumpling the assassin to the ground with a broken arm and a bruised diaphragm.

In the meantime, the other assailants had evidently decided that in the face of a metal monster, discretion was the better part of valour. They had disengaged from the few faithful servants and members of the council that remained and were fleeing. Most had already left through the door and only three remained within the room, those who had been furthest from the exit.

I charged towards them heedless of the cushions in the way. One managed to slip past me, bending like a reed, and made the door. The others weren't so lucky.

One I caught by his clothes and, with a hefty pull, threw to the floor, sending him skidding along the wood-panelled floor. The other attempted to duck past me as his compatriot had but was too slow, running into my arm chest-first and crumpling around it. I constricted the limb so that he was held by the neck between forearm and elbow and dragged him over towards the one I had thrown. Within a few seconds, the man in my arm was unconscious and I relaxed my hold slightly, switching my grip to his clothes.

The man on the floor, though, wasn't so lucky. He wasn't breathing, and his chest was oddly deformed. _Broken ribs_ , I guessed. _Probably pierced a lung._

Another dead. I regretted it, even if he had been an assassin.

Without the clamour of the fight, the roar of the approaching flames was audible.

Leaning down, I picked up the thrown assassin and flung him over a shoulder, none-too gently. Leads on the attacker would be more useful than dead assassins.

Then the battle-clarity of the Executive subsided, mostly, and I became aware of the eyes on me.

Five of the merchants remained alive, as well as the runner who had warned us about the fire and the Lawgiver, although he was crumpled in on himself on the floor, breathing heavily through clenched teeth. The cherry-red hue of the side of his breastplate offered a reason as to why. One of the assassins must have caught him there. Of the others, none had suffered worse than bruises, not out of any incompetence on the assassins' part but because anyone they got a solid hit in on was dead, not merely injured.

The entire fight had taken barely more than half a minute and in that time more than half the group had perished. Whoever had hired these guys and equipped them certainly hadn't spared expense.

For the moment, though, the most important things were to get out of the palace before it burned down around our heads, and to minimise the impact of the revelation of my nature. I was grateful beyond measure for the calming effects of the Executive's tactical protocols, even as I hated them for their invasiveness. _Still better than the full combat suite, though._

"I apologise for the deception of my nature, but it was necessary," I began. "I am no spirit, nor do I intend any harm to you. I was human, and remain human in mind at least. For now, though, we need to get out. The fire won't wait, and I don't know how long we have before it blocks off the exits."

My little speech seemed to have captured their attention. I turned to the Lawgiver. "Can you walk?"

He looked up at me, moved his legs to like he was trying to get underneath him and then stopped, a noise of pain escaping through his clenched teeth.

"That's a no, I think." I glanced over at the survivors of the attack, then pointed towards the runner as best I could. "Here. You take him." I held out the assassin whom I had choked. "I'll carry the Lawgiver."

The runner edged closer, nervously, and I passed the unconscious man to him before squatting down and passing the absorption-core over the heated metal of his armour, cooling it within moments from almost-red to a seared silver-black. Rainbow patterns of heat stress gave colour to the thing. Gently, I scooped the man up, bridal-style, careful to keep from putting any weight on the injured area.

I stepped towards the door, only to realise that my hands were occupied. "The door, if you please?"

Still looking rather dazed – likely in shock, although I didn't know whether it was because of me or at what had just happened – the small group huddled over to the door and opened it, revealing an as-yet unburnt corridor. Smoke curled in around the tops and edges of the doors, though, and the air was hot.

"Quickly!" I called, hurrying them out the door before turning sideways to fit myself and my passenger through. I started down the hall at a fast clip, long, mechanical strides eating up the distance between me and the portal at the far end.

With the battle-protocols subsiding, I became aware of a series of notifications from the Muninn. I spent a good second skimming them. Fighting in the western quarter, around where the markets would be in daylight. Fires in various buildings, one of which was perilously close to the company's main base.

 _Not just an assassination, then. A coup, large-scale._

I emerged from the smoke-filled corridors into the red-lit night.


	27. Chapter 27

Outside the palace, men and women, servants, merchants, mercenaries and others of all stripes milled about in confusion. My exit from the billowing smoke of the building with the Lawgiver in my arms and a small procession of richly-dressed individuals following me was more than enough to draw attention, though.

My appearance might have had something to do with it as well.

The illusion talisman wasn't working, and I hadn't had the time to re-tie it around my neck in any case. I didn't know if it would 'reboot' at all. That hadn't been in the deal, and I suspected that the spirits here were the sort that would take the letter of a deal over the spirit, pun not intended.

In all honesty, I could understand their reaction to a monolithic, animal-headed figure of metal stepping out of a burning building. Most shrank back, yelling in shock. A couple even screamed. Most that had weapons drew them, pointing them in my direction, although they didn't look overly confident.

 _Well,_ I thought, _Here goes._

"I mean no harm, but the Lawgiver has been injured by assassins! I require a healer!"

Heads turned, looking at one another, and a few of the gawkers peeled off to return to throwing water from the grounds' reflecting pools on the parts of the fire they could get to. A couple of runners fled off into the dark. I hoped that they were looking for healers and not just running away.

While I waited, I stepped forwards towards the group – trying to ignore how they shied away, even as the weapons were raised higher – and gently laid the Lawgiver on the ground, careful to keep the breastplate away from his burned side. I stepped back again, giving the men the space to reach the Lawgiver while remaining well within range of my emitter. Given that a group of the assassins had been disguised as servants the chances that there might be more were non-zero, and there were still the ones which got away.

In all honesty I didn't particularly like the Lawgiver - he was abrasive, authoritarian and more than a little arrogant - but that didn't mean I wanted him dead, and for more reason than just the humanitarian. The coldly logical part of me whispered that saving someone's life would be excellent grounds for a solid alliance, and given that the Council of Seven was currently the Council of Three there was unlikely to be a better time than now to gun for a position on it. If I could fight off the would-be usurper, if I could _win_ , I would be in a position to climb as high as I bloody well liked within the city's hierarchy, even more so if I could do so with minimal help.

Two of the Lawgiver's staff moved forwards, warily, and began to unstrap the armour from the nigh-catatonic man. He was mumbling things, but I couldn't make them out, even with my enhanced hearing. From what I remembered of how it had been described, that sounded like shock. I regretted never getting around to informing myself on first aid procedures.

 _Trust them to do their thing_ , I thought to myself as one of the runners returned with an older man in tow, _and do yours._

I submerged myself in the data streams from the Muninn which had been surveying the city and the ongoing fighting. Instinctively, I stitched the feeds together.

It looked like hell.

One building in four was on fire and there were people running through the streets or else barricading themselves into houses, taverns or wherever else they could hide themselves. The lines of battles were manifold and ever-shifting, patterns of ambush and counter-ambush in the streets between men in the colours of one mercenary company or another. Here and there, fighters using the distinctive weapons of the tribes faced off against the mercenaries as well, although that was rare and far more concentrated towards the southern parts of the city, where the camps of the two major tribes who were staying in the city were located.

The largest battle was taking place in the wide street that in daylight hours served as a marketplace. Rough battle-lines were drawn, with the occasional sortie through alleyways to get behind enemy lines. As I watched the unfolding war, I categorised the colours and symbols the fighters wore on shields, helmets and the occasional banner to one side or another.

I reached along the datalinks to the complex in the catacombs and let my awareness dance along the cores of the Legionnaires waiting there, setting them alight with flowing energy. One after the other the constructs woke and gripped the weapons I had had made for them.

Each Legionnaire was equipped with a sword made of the best steel I could make, not unlike how I'd enhanced the weapons of the Gurama months before. They were efficient, practical weapons, unadorned and businesslike. I'd foregone shields, as they seemed somewhat unnecessary, and instead had adapted a version of my own absorption core to act as a more efficient protective measure by removing its capability to emit energy in favour of greater absorptive abilities. It wasn't as though the Legionnaires were likely to fill their capacitors all the way, after all, given their rate of power consumption.

I had been working on a ranged weapon similar to a coilgun, but i hadn't finished it yet. It was too fragile at the moment, and it tended to misfire whenever used, tearing the thing to pieces and sending the slug wild. I spared a moment to regret not having it ready, then concentrated on what I did have ready.

I had forty-six Legionnaires in total, six of which were already above ground, having been acting as guards for the house and for the primary shop, four at the former and two at the latter. They'd not been engaged yet, the fighting remaining a few streets away in both cases and given my distraction they hadn't done much but get their swords ready. I directed them to hold position at the entrances until the rest of my troops arrived. It would take a minute or so for the bulk of the Legionnaires to reach the surface.

 _Hmm._

Should I remain with the Lawgiver and direct my troops from there or should I go with the force, lead from the front as it were?

I shook the thought off a moment later. _No. You're romanticising_ , I told myself. _This may be a fantasy world, but we still want a quick end to the fighting, for the sake of the city and the people. The less distracted you are, the more efficiently you can command._

I paused.

That didn't feel like me. I wouldn't think those things, would I? Was it the Executive? Had it crept up on me again?

I dived down into myself, opening my awareness to the inner world that was my mind-and-programming. No. The golden chain-sun remained quiet, the only enforced protocols a couple of minor ones which counteracted shock responses.

That was… quite disturbing, actually. Perhaps it was Pavlovian? I associate conflict with the robotic state of the Executive and therefore subconsciously assume it?

I didn't want to just abandon the friends I'd made here, though. When I weighed Reene and the boys against the Lawgiver, they won out by a mile. I'd never cared overly much for systems, except where they benefitted me - I could admit to being a little selfish that way. People, though? People I knew?

They mattered.

An interesting tidbit I'd come across somewhere on the internet was the idea that the human brain is fundamentally 'wired' to recognise about 160-250 people as 'people'. A throwback to humanity's tribal days, the article had blamed that psychological quirk for most of the societal problems that humanity had, from racism and discrimination to corporate apathy. I didn't know if it was true or just another one of those internet-facts that took on a life of their own, but that was how I felt about people.

 _My_ people matter. Between _my_ people and the _other_ people, mine come first.

And so I left, beginning the journey back through the streets of the city to the townhouse where Reene and Will had barricaded themselves in. As I went, I sent the order to one of the defending Legionnaires to inform my second-in-command of what I was doing, and to make sure that she wouldn't be surprised when the main force arrived in the basement. The message arrived just in time, as only half a minute after I sent it, the first of the Legionnaires slid the stone manhole aside and hauled itself up, quickly making space for the next.

I heard the sounds of metal-on-metal ahead and turned down an alleyway. I had no intention of joining a fight before I had gotten my tactics in order and, more importantly, had my glaive to hand. Metal fists were all well and good, but frankly it was just a waste of time.

I kept the majority of the forces in defensive formation around the house, temporarily removing the barricades on the doors for the Legionnaires to exit before closing them up again. One of them grabbed my glaive on the way.

I didn't want to jump into the battle half-assed and end up either mistaken for an enemy or just mucking up someone else's plans - or vice versa. I established the closest thing I could see to a command position on my side.

It was a ramshackle, improvised arrangement from what I could make out from the Muninn. Four officer-types working out of an 'appropriated' storefront. Runners came and went from all corners of the dispersed battlefield.

As I rounded the last corner onto the street on which the house stood, I ordered four of the Legionnaires to form up with me and grabbed my glaive from one of them.

Fitful orange lit the streets, tumbling down over the rooftops and sending shadows that seemed darker than black flitting along the mismatched walls of the alleyways. The shouts, yells and clash of metal got louder, too, until my group of five emerged into the main street.

If I had thought it looked a hellscape from the air, it was worse on the ground.

Stalls had been overturned and pulled into vague chevrons on both sides to act as shelters from the bolts and arrows which arced up and over the lines of battle and to control how many fighters could engage at any given point. It wasn't as neat as there being two facing barriers, either. Half-random arrangements littered the forum, perhaps intentionally or maybe they were just abandoned positions.

The command post was about a hundred yards away, but this was the closest way I could find. As soon as we stepped out of the alley's shadows into the open, a knot of sellswords spotted us.

"They've come around the side!" one of them yelled, starting towards me. His comrades turned at the shout, then they got a good look at me.

My skin was glowing with faint traceries of blue light, picking me out against the dark, and if that wasn't enough then the rest of my appearance must have been,a s they paused for a moment. I capitalised on the instant of uncertainty, raising my free hand palm open towards them and planting the glaive's butt firmly in the ground.

"I've come to talk to your commanders. I'm an ally, and I have a vested interest in seeing this battle over with."

"How do we know they've not gotten a sorcerer on their side to summon up a spirit to trick us and kill the captains, eh?" shot back one, a shorter man with a moustache noticeable even in the dimness through the opening of his helmet. His weapon, a curved, cutlass-like sword, remained drawn.

"I'm no spirit," I replied, getting a little frustrated. Couldn't they at least come up with something new? "And what would you rather, reinforcements or me walking away?"

He glanced back towards the chaos of fires, fighting and overturned market stalls.

"...Fine. I hope you're what you say. If you are, sorry for doubting you in advance. If not, I hope Angvard finds you fast."


	28. Chapter 28

As I entered the shop-turned-command post, four men, all armoured in one way or another and all wearing some form of insignia or marking of rank, were clustered around what must once have been one of the eating tables, now carved with a crude map of the city. A deep, winding incision marked the line of the river while coins, tokens and various odds and ends played the parts of the warring forces.

It would have been cool if I could have slammed the door of the improvised command post open and swept in like the protagonist of some Western film into a saloon. Unfortunately, the lack of a door, gambling patrons and the general atmosphere of the place sadly undercut my cinematic ambitions. I settled for the grabbed weapons and panicked looks that were becoming sadly familiar.

"I come in peace, and as an ally," I began. "I know that my appearance renders me perhaps less than trustworthy at first glance, but the fact remains that as things stand now, the city will most likely be a ruin come sunrise and no-one here wants that."

It was true, too. As I had walked over, I'd realised that even accounting for the numbers of fighters, the sheer amount of arson being carried out was impossible. More to the point, there was little-to-no reason for either side to so thoroughly destroy the city they were supposedly fighting over.

"This conflict is being puppeteered by an outside entity. My scouts have identified a number of individuals, concealed by both skill and what I believe to be magic, setting light to as much of the city as they can. If we intend to end this night with a city as opposed to ashes, we need to end the fighting as soon as possible. I can help with that."

The tallest of the officers present, a man with a thin pencil moustache and hair peeking out from underneath his arming cap, spoke up.

"I'm not one to turn away a gift at the door and I can see the logic what you're saying, but I have two questions. First, what assurance do we have that you're telling the truth - I'll not insult you by claiming that you're our mysterious malefactor, you'd be abysmally stupid to tell us of your schemes if you were - and second, what aid do you believe you can render?" He looked me up and down. "You're clearly either a magician of some kind or a spirit, and if you're on our side I'd welcome either."

"A magician, of sorts," I replied, pleasantly surprised. "I am, as far as I know, the only one who practices my form of magic. I won't bore you with the details, but it allows me to create minions of a similar construction to myself which I can then control mentally. As for what I can bring to the battle, information, both in the form of scouting from my flying automata - that's what I call my creations - and in news from the Lawgiver's palace plus a small combat force. Four of them are standing outside."

I directed one of the Legionnaires to step into the light and to cause its humanlike skin to change to a reflective, metallic hue for a moment before turning back again.

"Unfortunately, the combat models can only spend a short amount of time - a little under an hour - in combat before needing to rest and replenish their energy. What do you say?"

I extended a hand, open-palmed. No-one took it. A moment passed. They glanced at each other. Finally, one of the others - I called him Redhead in my mind, for the tall, centurion-esque plume of red hair on his helmet - spoke.

"I say we accept it. Not like the night can go any further down the shitter."

One by one, the others followed suit, although without much enthusiasm. I couldn't blame them, to be honest.

"So," Pencil-Moustache began. "Where do you think your… automata, was it? Can be of most use?"

XxXxXxXxX

A tense quarter-hour was spent in planning our next move. The realisation of both the scouting abilities and command-and-control possibilities brought to the field by the Muninn was more than a little satisfying to watch, and once the dozen or so sergeants and 'field commanders' were made aware of the altered situation via a combination of runners and the Muninn themselves, the battle began to slowly swing our way, even without the addition of the Legionnaires. The ability to survey the entire battlefield at once and to tell when and where the enemy would make their would-be surprise attacks was invaluable.

The actual entry of the Legionnaires into battle, though, took somewhat longer. The plan we devised was to make use of the increased tactical awareness offered by the Muninn to localise and confine the conflicts by use of harassment and small, carefully-guided groups. Archers on rooftops and spearmen in the streets herded our opponents towards our chosen ground, the square at the end of the market street.

The idea was to concentrate their forces and then bring in the Legionnaires to subdue them in as short a battle as possible, neatly sidestepping their active duration limitations. The plan had risks, of course, especially that of what would happen if our 'killing blow' failed, but it was the best idea we could come up with

It didn't all go our way, of course. After the initial half-hour or so of herding attacks, the enemy commander seemed to catch onto what we were intending and began to send out raiding parties of their own to counter ours.

The fighting quickly evolved into a complex game of cat and mouse, assault and withdrawal. Twice, a small party escaped the cordon and came for the command centre, but were luckily beaten back before they could either reach us or discover the teams of Legionnaires which had been moving into position.

By the time we were ready, the first pale light of the false dawn was showing over the mountaintops. Most of the men were showing the telltale signs of exhaustion, even the commanders who had been staying with me in the command post. Fortunately, the same troubles would apply to our enemies as well, while the Legionnaires would suffer no such impediment.

Provided, of course, that we could finish the battle quickly.

XxXxXxXxX

If I had a throat, I would have swallowed nervously.

It was ridiculous, really. I mean, I was in a group with my four 'honour guards', six additional Legionnaires and about fifty or so human mercenaries, none of whom had the protection or abilities I did. They'd doubtless fought in dozens of battles and they were still around, nevermind that they were mostly wearing leather armour with the occasional plate-armoured arm and chainmail vest here and there. They were using ordinary steel weapons and wood-and-leather shields while I had a bullshittium glaive and kinetic shielding, on top of being able to use the energy absorbed by that shielding to cook the enemy where they stood.

Nevertheless, I was still apprehensive. I'm…. not sure whether or not it was worse than before the battle with the slavers with the Gurama, but it wasn't pleasant feeling, certainly.

My group was one of three 'assault groups', and was the one in charge of blocking off the market street as an avenue of escape. We were spread out, twos and threes behind the barricades in the streets. We were to be the 'anvil', while the other two groups, which had eighteen Legionnaires each and fewer humans, were to be the 'hammers': hard-hitting and as terrifying as possible. There were a number of groups of archers who were getting ready to claim the rooftop positions as well, so as to lay down a crossfire. I didn't know so much about that part of the plan; Pencil-Moustache had been coordinating that, for the most part.

The point of the exercise was to achieve a surrender or slaughter - preferably the first option - as quickly as possible. That was why I was there, as opposed to sitting back in the command center. For all that my appearance was less than conducive to making friends, it was very good at being intimidating. A force led by what seemed to be a spirit, when many of the people were at the very least superstitiously cautious of spirits? Much more intimidating than one without that leader. The skin of the Legionnaires was currently a shifting shade of silver, for the same reasons.

My thoughts were interrupted by an alert from the Muninn I'd left in the command center for signalling.

"Begin."

 _Time to go_ , I repeated numbly in my head before the message sank in.

I felt the Executive's chains rising in response. I pushed it back, holding it for the few moments that I could as I stood from my crouch.

"FORM UP!" I yelled. And then, for good measure "Let's show these bastards what they get when they shit in our backyard!"

It was my attempt at channelling a combination of Robert Baratheon in war-mode and Dain of the Iron Hills dwarves from the last _Hobbit_ film, but it seemed to do the job. I let go, and felt the battle-protocols of the Executive grind into action as the Legionnaires formed up in the front line, five on either side, and the rest behind and beside them. Shields were locked and weapons readied.

"Advance!"

The verbal and mental commands were simultaneous. The advance itself, less so, but it was orderly enough.

We were drawing attention. Arrows arced over barricades opposite us. I activated the absorption shield. By the time they reached us, the projectiles lacked the strength to penetrate and merely clinked against raised shields.

Holding out my unoccupied hand, I activated the reverse mode. A heat shimmer erupted around the cloth-and-wood barriers, the nearer ones, for a moment before they erupted into flames. Men scurried out from behind them, retreating or forming into ranks themselves around a better-armoured figure. A sergeant? No matter.

"Fire," I said. Increased volume, no need to modulate 'shouting' tones.

Arrows speared the air over head and fell among the enemy. I counted seven who went down. I activated the absorption core again, setting the sergeant's clothes alight and increasing his blood temperature to unsurvivable levels. He fell, burning and steaming.

 _Energy reserves low. Utilise absorption mode only._

A roar built behind me. Bloodlust, psyched-up warriors, they were going to charge. I couldn't stop them. Instead, I instructed the Legionnaires to clear the way, planning out their charging-paths so as to intersect with the remains of the barriers. If given the chance, they should throw them forwards.

I leaned forwards and began to run myself, only slightly ahead of the rank behind.

 _Initiate psychological warfare._

 **"GHHRAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"**

A panicked look on the enemies' faces beneath their helmets. Good. There was only a metre between the closest soldier and I. I switched the grip on my glaive, bringing the tip up like a spearhead, aiming for the joint at the armpit of his shield-arm.

He brought his shield up, deflecting the thrust upwards, but it didn't matter. Propelled by the momentum of my charge, I crashed into the swordsman, knocking him backwards with my bulk and my other hand closed over his sword hand. An application of pressure and he screamed. I released the limb and his sword fell from a boneless hand. I grasped it halfway down the blade and brought the glaive down with my other hand, battering away his shield. There was a crack and he fell, one arm broken and the other hand shattered. His eyes had a glazed look to them.

There was a sudden jump in my energy reserves and an impact on the arm that was currently holding the downed mercenary's sword, not much harder than a punch. Turning, I saw another who had tried to get in a shot with his own weapon. _Short, cheap gear, young,_ I registered. Something moved beneath the chains and I didn't drop the sword _just so_ , catch the handle and take his head from his shoulders. Instead, I simply dropped the blade and caught his helmet with an open hand, sending into the ground.

There was another flurry of impacts as I discovered one of the downsides of being about seven feet tall - visibility. There was little more than cosmetic damage, but my energy banks were filling up at an unpleasant pace. I needed to make space to be able to safely vent it en-masse.

I channelled some of the excess energy to the actuators in my arms and began to spin the glaive, cutting down two enemy mercenaries before the rest managed to get out of range.

 **"GHHRAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"**

I roared again, buying another couple of seconds of time to switch input to output. I thrust out a hand towards the left, where my line was faltering, and heated the weapons of the enemy. Of the eight or nine in the area, five managed to keep a hold of them, denying the instinct to drop the hot object. The rest, though, didn't, and that side surged forwards, overrunning the hampered knot of fighters.

Satisfied, I switched back to input and swung the glaive back into a ready position as the 'hammer' forces formed up in the other two entrances to the plaza.


	29. Chapter 29

"HOLD!" I called, bringing the glaive up like a standard.

The fighting doesn't stop immediately, but there is a noticeable downtick in intensity. I carry on, keeping my voice at a volume that no human could manage without shouting.

"We have you surrounded, outnumbered and at a disadvantage. Surrender."

My voice managed to carry somewhat over the clamour of the battle, and at last the fighting slowed to something like a halt. Both sides took advantage of the pause to draw back and regroup, as much as they could. I carried on, hammering home my point.

"You are surrounded on three sides and face enemies with superhuman abilities. You have no reason to keep fighting. Lay down your arms and you will not come to harm. Continue fighting and I cannot guarantee anything."

I punctuated the last word by slamming the butt of the glaive into the cobbled ground. In the quiet, the cracking of the stone was audible. Shock and awe. An efficient means of demonstrating power.

It certainly seemed to have an effect. What I could see of the faces beneath the enemies' helms was pasty and drawn. Fear responses. De-escalation was necessary before someone did something reckless.

I held out my empty hand, palm up, as though offering a handhold. Some part of me quailed at the arrogance of the thing, standing in front of a force of armed men and behaving like I was some kind of saviour, the part that still felt like one of the nameless billions on earth. That part was kept silent by the weight of _necessity_ that was the Executive.

"Better to live than die on a sword for coin you won't spend," I began. I paused as a man thrust his way out of the crowd with the kite shield on his arm. His sword was still unsheathed, but he held it loosely, pointing down towards the ground. The plume on his helmet announced him as one of the captains on the other side.

With the lack of direct conflict, the Executive began, slowly, to retreat, just a little. I wasn't sure whether to be grateful to to grab for its certainty of purpose and resolve.

Alright, you can stop jamming yer point home with a warhammer," the captain drawled in an accent I'd come to associate with Surdans. It was vaguely American, or perhaps Canadian. I'd never really travelled that much on Earth. Or here, for that matter. "What I wanna know is, what'll happen to us after we down arms? Sure, we fight for coin and so do these buggers," He gestured with his sword towards the people who stood behind me "But you can't say we'll all sit down together and drink to this tomorrow night. How do I know I won't have me throat slit in me bed tomorrow, next week, the week after, by some bugger whose buddy's arm I've broken, or whose head my men have taken?"

He looked up at me, and I could see the curve of his lip.

"I don't know if you're the ghost of the city, the mountain or some wraith the tribes cooked up to scare us, but unless you can assure me that I'll be safe if I put down good old Blooddrinker I might as well go to Angvard with her to keep me company."

"And what would be the point of that?" I rejoined. "Maybe you're happy to go meet your ancestors, but what about the men behind you? Are they willing to die with you? You're a leader. Therefore, your _duty_ is to do your best for your followers. I'll give my word that I'll do my best to keep you safe, but I'm no god." I could be. "I won't haunt myself with impossible promises. I _will_ do my best, though, and my best is quite good." On the last words, I let a trace of amusement slip into my tone in place of a smile that I couldn't form.

It worked, thankfully.

The sword was sheathed, albeit grudgingly, and the nameless captain unbuckled his scabbard to place it on the ground.

XxXxXxXxX

When dawn came, it shone down upon a city that had seen better days.

The fighting was over. After the surrender of the largest group, the few knots of enemies which we had been unable to herd in had given up quickly. Their weapons had been taken, indexed and stored by the Legionnaires and the Ants I had called up out of the catacombs. The secret was well and truly out of the bag, after all. I made sure to make as powerful an impression as I could.

The men - and the occasional women, although they were far scarcer - who had fought against us were marched back to the barracks and dormitories their companies had laid claim to and 'asked' politely to remain there.

There were still scars, though. On the city and on the people. Wounds bled, staunched by the few healers and chirurgeons that could be found on either side where they could be. Herds of terrified cattle had fled the city. It would be the work of days to round them up again. It would be the work of weeks, if not months, to repair the damage of the fires and the looting if I didn't put the Weavers to work helping. Other things will never be fixed or returned to how they were. Singular, prized possessions, meaningless to any but their holders. Innocence. Lives.

Like Heskel.

He wasn't dead. I thanked whatever powers there might be for that, even as I cursed them for what they had done to him. A leg, crushed beyond repair. Burns that I might have called third-degree had I known what the term meant beyond TV shows. He was still alive, though. I had never been a religious person - the closest I'd ever got was agnosticism - but I was thankful for that at least.

The Muninn found him. He was lying half-buried beneath the rubble of a house which had fallen when one of its supporting beams had burnt halfway through. He must have been running in the street, for whatever reason. The only reason he was recognisable from the air was the fact that he had - somehow - managed to fall face-up.

A small swarm of Ants and Weavers had extricated him, and by the time they had finished getting him out and putting together a rudimentary stretcher to lay him on I had bullied one of the couple dozen healers that made the city their home into looking him over. The pronouncement hadn't been good. The burns were isolated to the left arm and side of the torso and apparently were better than I had thought them to be at first. They would scar, the healer said, and would need careful tending, but so long as they didn't get infected they would be fine.

The leg was another matter.

It had been caught under a large block of masonry when the house had collapsed, which had crushed the bone to splinters. The knee was a wrecked knob of flesh, deformed, while the lower leg was disgustingly _flattened_ , as if someone had taken a rolling pin to it. His foot was likewise squashed, unnaturally compressed.

The healer, a grizzled, dour man who looked more my idea of an old soldier than a doctor, had declared that it was beyond help unless I had an elf on call to heal it and recommended that it be amputated just above the knee as soon as possible and the stump cauterized. He had then given me a blunt "Condolences," recommended a half-dozen salves for the burns – all of which I had carefully committed to my memory banks and promptly set an Ant to gather - and stumped off.

That was how Reene and Will found me the next morning, watching as a Weaver carefully applied a generous layer of a yellow-white paste to the bared side of Heskel's torso, his arm already thoroughly slathered in it. I had continued to somewhat absent-mindedly administrate the recovery efforts, but my attention had been focused on my injured... friend? Employee? Exasperating little-brother-substitute? I didn't really know.

He rasped when he breathed. It was a horrible sound. I took comfort in the fact the he was still breathing, though. I thanked my lucky stars that my chemistry teacher had been easily persuaded into tangents and had, on one occasion, given a ten-minute talk on the chemical structure of morphine. I had had a Weaver fabricate a litre or so of it, and was trying to recall if I knew anything about an appropriate dosage. If I couldn't remember anything, I wouldn't use it. I didn't want anything to do with an overdose. Better pain than that.

"Alexander?"

The voice was quiet, devoid of either the natural sensuousness or ironic undercurrent I had come to associate with it, but it was unmistakably Reene's. As I turned, I suddenly realised that I had never told her that I was an automaton as well, had never removed the talisman around her. I regretted that as well.

I shouldn't have gotten so used to lying.

"Yes," I replied. I sounded tired even to myself, despite the fact that I physically _couldn't_ be. She looked as tired ass I sounded, with bruised bags sagging beneath her eyes. Her shoulders were slumped, utterly unlike her usual stance. Will was standing behind her, almost hiding.

 _He is hiding_ , I realised _, From me._

"I'm still me," I assured the pair, and myself. "I've... been like this for as long as you've known me. All that's changed is how I look." I raised a hand up to the dead talisman and pulled it out to show. "A spirit gave this the power to make me look human." I trailed off pathetically as Reene raised a hand, a hint of her old imperiousness shining through.

"I don't care about that at the moment," she retorted. "You can finish explaining later. What happened to Heskel?"

Haltingly, I explained the story, the diagnosis and the predictions that the healer had made. All the while, I was painfully conscious of Will and how... broken he looked, staring down at the still body of his elder brother – I didn't know whether they were actually brothers or whether they'd adopted each other. It didn't really matter in any case. They were as close as brothers, and so help me I loved them both. Will reminded me of my younger brother from Earth and Heskel was more like an old friend of mine from school, one whom I'd grown up with. It hurt, to be reminded of them.

I reached the end of my explanation. The silence stretched painfully. Finally, Will spoke up.

"You're magic, aren't you? Can't you help him?"

I was about to say _no, I can't, that's not how my magic works, the best I can do is to make him a prosthetic for the leg,_ but then I stopped. An idea had come to me.

Prosthetics would be easy for me, so why couldn't I take it a step further? Cybernetics, of a sort, already existed back on Earth. Pacemakers, experimental limbs that responded to impulses in the brain. There were still large amounts of the archives from the _Ambition_ that had yet to be decoded, but I distinctly remembered the elfin figures in some of the pictures which had been recovered sporting obviously non-biological modifications and augmentations. Granted, I didn't know if those were created through my kind of magic or something more similar to what the elves did to themselves in the books, but why couldn't I do the same?

My mind whirled with thoughts, ideas, plans. It would be hard. It would need time, time to research and time to build. I would need better resources. Magicians in case of rejection and for the sake of healing. This wasn't just whipping up a new automaton by combining preexisting designs. This would be a thousand times more difficult, combining arcanoengineering with biology. It was the kind of thing that scientists on Earth had been trying to accomplish for years.

I looked down at Heskel, pale and broken on his stretcher.

I would succeed. I wasn't human, not any more, and I could do so much more than a human. I had access to magic, real magic. What I was had been revealed to the city, so I had no more reason to hold back for the sake of subtlety.

I looked down at Will.

"I can help. I will."

XxXxXxXxX

And we're done. I sincerely apologize for the wait. I had thought I had posted this chapter ages ago but no, that was just me being stupid. This is the end of this fic, however. I may or may not write a sequel in the future (tentatively entitled _The Winter of Our Discontent_ ) but if I do it won't be for a while.

I do have a request to make, however. My wonderful beta reader/idea bouncer/person-who-verbally-slaps-me-around-the-head-when-I'm-being-stupid, Omnimessiah , is no longer really able to serve in that position, as he's a bit snowed in with work at the moment. Accordingly, as I'm entirely unwilling to go into my next major project without someone to help me/stop me from tumbling gown the slope of fanfiction madness, I'm **putting out a call for someone to help me in that respect**.

It would probably be better if whoever it is lives within a couple timezones of London, for ease of coordination. At least basic knowledge of the RPG _Exalted_ would be good as well. I like to bounce ideas back and forth when possible, so the quicker and easier the form of communication you're willing to use the better. Voice chat of some description would be ideal, but I'm more than happy with instant messaging programs like Messenger or Skype, and PMs would work if that's all you're comfortable with.

If anyone's interested, send me a PM.

It's been a great ride but, in the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, that's all, folks!


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